Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus

Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus ; छत्रपति शिवाजी टर्मिनस
UNESCO world heritage
	The station building, formerly known as Victoria Terminus known
National territory:	India
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	(ii) (iv)
Surface:	2.85 ha
Reference No .:	945
UNESCO region :	Asia and Pacific
	History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2004 (session 28)

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (छत्रपती शिवाजी महाराज टर्मिनस) and Mumbai CST , to 1996 Victoria Terminus , is a station of the Indian Railways in Mumbai , which is located south of the city. It is one of the largest and busiest train stations in the world and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004 . More than 1,000 trains and around three million people pass the station every day; This makes it one of the busiest in the world in terms of passengers, along with Tokyo Shinjuku .

history

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus at night

The British architect Frederick William Stevens (1847–1900) was commissioned in 1878 to design a station building as the western terminus for long-distance traffic to and from the port city of Bombay. During his preliminary studies in England, he was inspired by the station building of St. Pancras Station in London . When the building was completed in 1888, it was considered the largest and most important building in British India . The station was named in memory of Queen Victoria's golden reign . Towards the end of the 1920s, it was expanded and has been used for suburban traffic since then. Since 1996 he bears the name of the Hindu marathan leader (Chhatrapati, about "patron") Shivaji ; In 2016, the government of the state of Maharashtra added the word "Maharaj" (short form of the Indian ruler title Maharajah ) to the name, so that the current official name is "Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus".

architecture

The building is in the style of Victorian neo-Gothic ( tracery , pinnacles , gargoyles ); Style elements of the Indo-Islamic architecture are - in contrast to other contemporary or later representative buildings in the crown colony - hardly recognizable. The platforms with a steel and glass roof are around 200 to 700 m long. Above the main entrance there is an approx. 100 m high, accessible, octagonal dome, which is supported by a rib construction. Inside there are open colonnades. The building is richly decorated with stone sculptures and reliefs. The statue of the Lady of Progress rises on the dome .

The station building has become the symbol of Mumbai as a “Gothic City”. The Indian monsoons and the city's smog pose a serious threat to the building fabric.

Others

In 2008, the train station became one of the targets of the Mumbai terrorist attacks . 58 people were killed and 104 others injured.
The station is the location of the final scene of the hit film Slumdog Millionaire (2008).