how to get to bombay castle?

Answered by Aadil Desai , Mumbai, India

Bombay Castle is inside the Naval Dockyard and is inaccessible to the public as such unless you go on one of the heritage walks inside the Naval Dockyard arranged by the Navy during Navy week or during the first Sunday of every month after registering with the Naval authorities. Foreigners are not allowed inside at any time. It was a Portuguese mansion called Casa de Orta belonging to Garcia de Orta. It also has a sundial which shows some hours of the day unlike most other dials which show morning to evening hours!!! The first governor General Aungier used to stay here but later on the governors used to stay at what is now the Haffkine Institute at Parel and later on at the present Raj Bhavan at Walkeshwar.

Answered by V.Srinivasan (Shinu) , New Delhi, India

Hi there, let me first correct your question, who are you and why do you want to visit this place and from where you want to start and end up here. answer this first then i will guide you properly. Thanks

Answered by Khushal Jaswal , Shimla, India

A very small part of the original fort wall exists to this date. Most people (including those living in Bombay) are unaware of this and I had to hunt around for quite some time before I found it. Unfortunately, the city municipal corporation has built a public lavatory right in front of this forgotten landmark.The main building within this castle is the Governor's House.The current building houses the offices of the Flag Oficer Commander-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command.It's situated at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Road
INS Angre
Mumbai , India 400023

Answered by chandrashekhar vairale , Pune, India

Amidst the looming skyscrapers within the concrete jungle that is Mumbai rests the Bombay Castle – one of the first structures to mark Mumbai as a commercial centre. A remnant of the colonial (and prior to that, the Portuguese) conquest of Mumbai, this fort is one of the city’s oldest defensive structures.
http://www.wherecity.com/articles/bombay-castle-90.html

Answered by dinesh khatri , New Delhi, India

Bombay Castle (also Casa da Orta) is one of the oldest defensive structures built in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The current castle is a structure built by the British on the site of the Manor House built by a Portuguese nobleman Garcia de Orta . Orta had leased the island of Bombay from the King of Portugal between 1554 and 1570.
The castle was built of local blue Kurla stone and red laterite stone from the Konkan region to the south. In 1662, after the islands came under the hands of the British, the British East India Company took possession of the castle in 1665. Over the next ten years, they built a defensive structure around the manor. Around the same time, a wall was being built around a new urban centre. The wall was later demolished in 1865 after the city grew rapidly. Fragments of this wall however still exist in some areas.
Few records of the original Portuguese castle remain and historians are trying to piece together the original location of the manor. Two gates of the manor are located within INS Angre, a naval station in South Mumbai. A sundial thought to date back to the Portuguese era is also present. This sundial does not mark out the 12 hours of a day, but marks out certain periods which are deemed to be important to people of those days.
The main building within this castle is the Governor's House (Raj Bhavan) in which Gerald Aungier, the first Governor of Bombay used to stay. The residence was later moved to Parel and then to Malabar Hill over the next two centuries. The current building houses the offices of the Flag Officer Commander-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command.