The historic heart of colonial Bombay, clustered around the old fortifications that gave the area its name. The surviving Victorian Gothic civic buildings form one of the finest concentrations of 19th-century architecture in Asia: the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (the old Victoria Terminus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the Bombay High Court, the University of Mumbai library and clock tower, and the Rajabai Tower all stand within a short walk of each other, built in an exuberant mixture of Gothic Revival and Indian ornamental detail.
Horniman Circle — the former Elphinstone Circle — is a formal garden ringed by arcaded commercial buildings, a rare piece of planned Georgian urban space in the city. The Asiatic Society of Mumbai faces the circle and holds one of the oldest libraries in India, open to the public. The lanes immediately around the circle are the city's traditional financial district, still busy with stockbrokers, lawyers, and textile merchants in old buildings that have changed surprisingly little in a century.