Yellow taxis, red and white saris
Kolkata
Yellow Ambassador taxis, red-brick colonial offices and white saris with red borders mark Bengal's capital.
Why Kolkata is taxi yellow
Kolkata's best-known colour is the yellow of its Ambassador taxis, a rounded Indian car based on a 1950s British design. Production ended in 2014 and the old cabs are being retired, so they grow fewer each year. Red and white is the city's other pairing. During Durga Puja many Bengali women wear a white sari with a broad red border, and on the last day married women smear each other with red sindoor powder. Red also runs through the colonial centre, where the Writers' Building and the High Court are faced in red brick. Since the early 2010s the state government has painted many railings, flyovers and public buildings blue and white.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Kolkata
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Kolkata" on Wikipedia. If you know Kolkata and we have it wrong, tell us.
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๐ฎ๐ณ The Blue CityJodhpurOld-city houses washed in blue crowd the foot of Mehrangarh Fort, on the edge of the Thar Desert.
๐ฎ๐ณ The Pink CityJaipurThe walled city wears a dusty terracotta pink, first painted on for a royal visit in 1876 and kept ever since.
๐ฎ๐ณ The White CityUdaipurWhite palaces and whitewashed houses stand around lakes in the Aravalli hills of southern Rajasthan.
๐ฎ๐ณ The Golden CityJaisalmerA fort and town built of yellow sandstone that glows like honey at sunset, deep in the Thar Desert.
๐ฎ๐ณ City of saffron and lightVaranasiSaffron robes, marigold garlands and oil lamps colour the river steps of one of the oldest living cities.
๐ฎ๐ณ Town of Holi coloursVrindavanFor Holi the temple town of Krishna's childhood fills with clouds of pink, yellow and green powder.Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Udaipur In: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Jaisalmer In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Varanasi In: Marcin Biaลek, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source