Sovabazar Rajbari

Address: Raja Nabakrishna Street. 
Timing and Entry: Private residence, outer courtyard generally accessible; ask permission to photograph. 
The most historically charged of North Kolkata’s mansions. Founder Maharaja Nabakrishna Deb (1733-97) amassed his fortune as dewan to Robert Clive around the 1757 Battle of Plassey, becoming one of the chief Bengali intermediaries who turned British commercial presence into political dominance. The two palaces he built here formed the largest private palace complex in Calcutta; the family’s Durga Puja, held unbroken since 1757 and believed to have once been attended by Clive himself, is the oldest continuous community Puja in the city, a compressed symbol of how entangled the indigenous and colonial were among 18th-century Kolkata’s elite. The mansion’s grand courtyard is framed by a seven-arched thakur dalan, eight Tuscan facade columns and a rear navaratna temple housing the family deity; its main entrance, the Singha Dwar (Lion Gate), gives the palace its popular name, Baag ola Bari (“Palace with the Lions”).