Flora Fountain

This guide to Flora Fountain in Mumbai opens with a near miss: built in 1864 to honor Sir Bartle Frere, the British Governor who had just torn down the city's old fort, the fountain almost carried his name until, at the last moment, the Roman goddess Flora took the pedestal instead. It follows the fountain's rise as the gleaming centerpiece of a colonial capital, designed by British architect Richard Norman Shaw at the spot where the fort's Church Gate once stood. Then it turns to the mid-1950s, when Marathi-speaking Mumbaikars gathered on this same ground to demand their own state, and the police response that followed. Look for the second stone figure beside Flora, holding a flame, and consider why it stands where it does.