Chandannagar, Chinsurah · IN

Institut de Chandernagor (The Indo French Cultural Centre & Museum)

On a wide riverside promenade in Chandannagar, a small town about 40 km north of Kolkata, the Institut de Chandernagor keeps alive one of India's least-told colonial stories: France's 275-year presence in Bengal. Housed in the graceful Dupleix Palace, the former residence of the French governors, this museum and cultural centre is one of West Bengal's oldest museums and the heart of a quietly French corner of Bengal. Inside, glass cases gather the detritus of the Carnatic Wars and the French East India Company — heavy cannons, 18th-century furniture, coins, maps, sculptures and a marble bust of Governor Joseph François Dupleix himself — while outside the building opens onto the Strand, a leafy boardwalk along the Hooghly where the town's French past lingers in a Gothic church and a gate marked 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'. It is a compact, atmospheric stop that makes a rewarding half-day excursion from Kolkata.