Kolkata: the city of joy and trams

The Victoria Memorial, an imposing white marble building erected in honor of Queen Victoria, houses a museum today dedicated to the history of British colonialism in India.

A short walk away, the Howrah Bridge, a cantilever bridge over the Hooghly River, remains one of the world's busiest bridges with hundreds of thousands of crossings daily.

Continuing, you can visit College Street, a district of bookshops and used book stalls that makes Calcutta the most important publishing center in eastern India.

As evening falls, a ride on the city's historic trams, the only ones still active in all of India, traverses the illuminated colonial quarters.

The Howrah Bridge, lacking piers in the river to avoid obstructing river traffic, was constructed entirely of steel during World War II, when India was still a British colony.

Calcutta was the capital of British India until 1911, when the seat of government moved to Delhi: many of its grand colonial buildings date from this period of peak administrative splendor.