Jorasanko

Jorasanko Thakur Bari is where Rabindranath Tagore was born and spent most of his childhood. It is now the Tagore museum and the Rabindra Bharati University which was set up primarily as a centre for music and fine arts, but extended subsequently to arts and humanities.

This area has several examples of fine architecture, including the Marble Palace, a palatial nineteenth-century mansion in North Kolkata, built in 1835 by Raja Rajendra Mullick, a wealthy Bengali merchant with a passion for collecting works of art.

The nearby neighbourhood of Chitpur has been home to Jatra Para for over a hundred years. Even today, the street filled with posters featuring exaggerated expressions on loudly decked-up faces, is a home of more than thirty Jatra companies of Kolkata.

However, with the surge of electronic media, this theatre form is currently going through its lowest phase, much like the dilapidated Putul Bari (Dolls House - said to be haunted) remnants of a lavish palace which was once home to a Jatra theatre company and witness to elaborate carnivals and grand festivities.

Closer to the river is the settlement of the potters at Kumartuli (Kumor-potter, tuli - area). These artisans specialise in making sculptures of gods and goddesses, worshipped in large numbers in the mansions all around, at community pujas in the city and beyond.