Centuries of colonisation have left their mark on Indian architecture. Many notable buildings were built during the era of the British Raj, and also during the Portuguese rule in Goa and by the French in Pondicherry.

India’s most modern city is Chandigarh, designed by Le Corbusier who created symmetrical grids. Another outstanding sample of modern Indian architecture is the Bahai Temple in New Delhi.

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In 1497, the Portuguese king sent the navigator Vasco da Gama to find a sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Da Gama reached the port of Kozhikode (Calicut) on the Malabar coast on June 18, 1498. The Portuguese set up a trading empire in the Indian Ocean, capturing and fortifying all the leading trading ports. India.

In 1510, a seaborne expeditionary force commanded by the Portuguese military leader Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa and it became the capital of the Portuguese empire in Asia. The Portuguese built a series of remarkable churches in Old Goa that owed nothing to local traditions and everything to Baroque developments in Europe.

The Portuguese supremacy in the Indian Ocean lasted for just over a hundred years. The British East India Company was founded in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company two years later. The Dutch were much stronger at sea than the Portuguese, and within 50 years they had reduced the Portuguese maritime empire in India to a shadow of its past. The Dutch had a strong presence in Cochin (now Kochi).

In the 1600’s the British East India Company acquired three independent sovereign settlements in India, Madras (now Chennai), Bombay (now Mumbai), and Calcutta (now Kolkata), and each grew into substantial trading ports. The ports were all fortified with sea walls and cannon. After 1700, the British East India Company was strong enough to equip a large number of well armed ships for trading in the Indian Ocean.

In the 1720’s the French government granted a charter to a French East India Company to trade with India. The French made their headquarters at Pondicherry in southern India. In the 1740’s the French and British supported rival Indian rulers in internal wars. Military and naval conflicts resulted from these political involvements, with a victory for the British in southern India.

In 1755 Colonel Robert Clive recovered Calcutta from the Muslim nawab of Bengal and led the company’s troops to victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Historians regard this event as the starting point of the British Empire in India, even though large parts of the country remained under the rule of Indian princes. It took nearly another hundred years for the East India Company and the British government to extend British rule to northern and western India.

The British, who ruled parts of India from 1757 to 1947, brought new styles of art and architecture. British officials in India copied great houses in Britain. Some Indian princes and merchants followed their lead and built palaces and mansions in European styles. The ultimate plan for New Delhi was carried out by British architects who had little time for Hindu architecture.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, a style known as “Indo Saracenic” came into use. The basic design was Western, but architects added Indian features such as domes, kiosks, and fine carved stonework. Two good examples are the Maharaja’s New Palace in Kolhapur designed by Major Charles Mant, and the Gateway of India in Bombay (now Mumbai), designed by George Wittet.

In the immediate aftermath of the colonial period, Independent India set about trying to establish a break from the immediate imperial past, but was uncertain how to achieve it. In the event foreign architects were commissioned for major developments, such as Le Corbusier’s design for Chandigarh and Louis Khan’s buildings in Ahmedabad. The latter, a centre for training and experiment, contains a number of new buildings such as those of the Indian architect Charles Correa.