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Mumbai’s Art Deco & Victorian Buildings Declared UNESCO World Heritage Site (For Real)

Mumbai is now only the second Indian city after Ahmedabad to be inscribed on the UNESCO world heritage list

South Mumbai’s Art Deco & Victorian buildings were declared a UNESCO world heritage site on June 30. Mumbai has the largest collection of Art Deco buildings after Miami Which include Eros cinema and Cricket Club of India. The 19th-century Victorian Gothic structures include Bombay High Court, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Mumbai University etc.

At Manama in Bahrain, where the 42nd UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting was held on Saturday, France termed the Mumbai dossier as “magnificent” while Azerbaijan described it as “perfect”, noticing that despite two decades or urban development, the city has been able to preserve the heritage site.

Conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah, who prepared the nomination dossier, said,

“What favoured our dossier was that despite urban development for the last 20 years, Mumbai has managed to preserve this site. The very fact that Mumbai became first city in India in 1995 to regulate heritage regulations has been appreciated by UNESCO.”

India now has 37 world heritage inscriptions.