Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Mumbai's oldest museum opened in 1872 as the Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay, and it holds what may still be the prettiest room in the city: teal columns picked out in gold, Minton-tiled floors, daylight landing on glass cases. The collection is small in scale and unusually personal: maps, scale models, decorative arts and clay figures tracing how seven islands were stitched into a metropolis. It reopened in January 2025 after a long municipal restoration. Open roughly 10:00 to 17:30, inside the Rani Baug garden compound, so the two go together.

Seven islands turning into a metropolis, told inside a gilded Victorian hall