You don't just visit Mumbai: you live it, suffer it and love it in equal measure. It is India's biggest, richest and most frenetic city, a melting pot of more than twenty million people where obscene luxury and extreme poverty sit side by side, where millionaires' skyscrapers stand next to Asia's largest slum, and art deco mansions face the sea while markets are so crowded you can barely move. It is the capital of Indian money and also of its dreams: Bollywood is here, the most prolific film factory on the planet, and every day thousands of people arrive from all over India looking for an opportunity.
Born from seven fishing islands joined together by the Portuguese and the British, Bombay —today Mumbai— was the Empire's great colonial city on the Arabian Sea, and it still shows off its Victorian heritage like few others: the monumental Victoria Terminus railway station (now CSMT), a World Heritage Site, the Fort neighbourhood with its Gothic buildings, the Gateway of India facing the water and the legendary Taj hotel. But Mumbai is also the modern India that never stops: the packed suburban trains, the lunchbox carriers (dabbawalas), the bustle of Colaba, the sunset on Marine Drive.
This guide helps you tame that overflowing energy: what to see in the historic south, how to get to the Elephanta Caves, how the local train works, where to eat the best street food, how to visit Dharavi respectfully and how much everything costs. Mumbai can be overwhelming at first, but it wins you over fast: it is one of the most human, vibrant and surprising cities in Asia, a living portrait of all of India's many faces gathered together by the sea.
Mumbai was born from seven islands off the coast of Maharashtra, inhabited since ancient times by Koli fishing communities. It passed through the hands of Hindu dynasties, the Gujarat Sultanate and, in 1534, the Portuguese, who called it Bom Bahia ('good bay'). In 1661 the islands were handed to the English crown as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry when she married Charles II, and shortly afterwards the British East India Company leased them and turned them into its main port on the west coast. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, huge land reclamation works joined the seven islands into a single landmass, and Bombay grew into a great commercial, port and textile centre of the Empire, with spectacular Victorian architecture. It was also a key centre of the independence movement. After 1947 it remained the country's economic engine and, in 1995, officially changed its name from Bombay to Mumbai (after the local goddess Mumbadevi). Today it is India's financial megacity, home to Bollywood and a symbol of its contrasts. Its story of islands, Portuguese, British and cotton magnates is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The India of the coasts and the Dravidian south: the megacity of Mumbai, Portuguese Goa, spice-scented Kerala and its backwaters, the plantations of Munnar and the ruins of the Vijayanagara empire at Hampi.
Read the history of The west and the south →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 8 activities in Mumbai. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
India's most dizzying city was born, paradoxically, from the sea and the mud. Where a megacity of twenty million people stands today, there were, just a few centuries ago, seven islands separated by marshes and channels, covered in mangroves and palm trees, and inhabited by Koli fishing communities, the original people of these shores. The Koli worshipped a local goddess, Mumbadevi, whose name ('Mother Mumba') is the origin of the city's current name, Mumbai, officially restored in 1995 in place of the colonial 'Bombay'.
Over the centuries, these islands belonged to various Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires of western India. That distant era left extraordinary traces, such as the Elephanta Caves, on an island in the harbour, with their rock-cut temples dedicated to Shiva carved between the 5th and 8th centuries, and the Buddhist Kanheri Caves, in what is now a national park inside the city. The islands sat at a crossroads of maritime trade routes, but without the importance they would gain later.
In the 14th century, the region fell under the rule of the Muslim Sultanate of Gujarat. And in 1534 a new player entered the scene: the Portuguese, in the middle of their expansion across the Indian Ocean, took the islands from the sultan. According to the most widespread explanation, it was they who gave the area the name 'Bom Bahia' or 'Bombaim', the 'good bay', after its magnificent natural harbour. But the Portuguese failed to see the potential of these swampy islands: for them, Goa, further south, was far more important. Bombay would have to wait for other masters to take off.
The decisive turn in Mumbai's history was as unusual as it was romantic: the city changed hands as part of a wedding dowry. In 1661, King Charles II of England married the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, and among the assets she brought to the marriage were the islands of Bombay, ceded by the Portuguese crown to the English one. And so, almost by chance, one of India's finest natural harbours passed into the British orbit.
The English king, however, saw those distant, swampy islands as more of a nuisance than a treasure, and in 1668 he leased them to the British East India Company for a ridiculous sum: a few pounds of gold a year. It was the best investment imaginable. The Company, which was looking for a safe harbour on the west coast, immediately understood Bombay's strategic value (sheltered, deep, easy to defend) and moved its main regional base there, at the expense of nearby Surat.
From then on, Bombay grew without pause. The Company fortified the city (hence the name of the Fort district), attracted merchants from all over India (Gujaratis, Parsis, Jews, Muslims) with a policy of religious tolerance that put business above everything else, and undertook a titanic project that would define the city's geography: joining the seven islands into one. During the 18th and 19th centuries, huge land reclamation projects drained the marshes and joined the islands, creating the continuous peninsula on which South Mumbai stands today. The city literally won land from the sea.
The 19th century turned Bombay into one of the great cities of the British Empire. Two engines drove its rise. The first was cotton: when the American Civil War (1861-1865) cut off the supply of cotton from the southern United States to English mills, Bombay became the main alternative supplier, and the city enjoyed a spectacular economic boom. Textile mills opened, business flourished and a class of immensely wealthy local entrepreneurs emerged, many of them Parsis (the Zoroastrian community of Persian origin), such as the legendary Tata family.
The second engine was the railway. In 1853, the first passenger train in all of Asia left Bombay, and the city became the great railway hub of western India, linked to the cotton of the interior and to the port that exported it to the world. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 shortened the distance to Europe and multiplied its sea traffic. Bombay was, beyond any doubt, the 'gateway to India'.
With wealth came stone. The city filled up with monumental Victorian buildings in Gothic and Indo-Saracenic style: the dazzling Victoria Terminus station (now CSMT), a true cathedral of the railway, the High Court, the University with its clock tower, museums and markets. Decades later, in the 1930s and 1940s, a second architectural wave would line the seafront with elegant Art Deco buildings. That unique combination of Victorian and Art Deco facing the sea was recognised as a World Heritage Site in 2018. Bombay had become a monumental, cosmopolitan and proud city, the economic capital of British India.
Bombay was not only the economic capital of British India: it was also one of the main stages of the struggle for independence. The Indian National Congress, the party that would lead the nationalist movement, was founded in the city in 1885. And it was in Bombay, in August 1942, that Mahatma Gandhi launched the historic 'Quit India' call, demanding an immediate end to British rule, in a speech at what is now called August Kranti Maidan that sparked a wave of protests across the country.
When India finally won independence in 1947, one of the most symbolic moments took place in Bombay itself: in February 1948, the last British troops left the country by embarking beneath the Gateway of India, the same arch through which the symbols of the Empire had paraded years before. The monument built to celebrate colonial power thus became a witness to its end.
In independent India, Bombay remained the financial, industrial and commercial heart of the country. In 1960, after an intense linguistic conflict, it became the capital of the new state of Maharashtra, where most people speak Marathi. And in 1995, the state government officially changed the city's name from 'Bombay' to 'Mumbai', reclaiming the local root of the goddess Mumbadevi's name and leaving the colonial name behind. It was a change loaded with political meaning and a statement of identity, although many residents still use both names quite naturally.
21st-century Mumbai is one of the largest megacities in the world and the undisputed economic centre of India: it is home to the stock exchange, the central bank's headquarters, the offices of the big corporations and a huge share of the country's wealth. It is also the world capital of Bollywood, the Hindi film industry that produces hundreds of films a year and fuels the dreams of the whole subcontinent. Every day, thousands of people arrive in the city from all over India looking for an opportunity, drawn by that magnet of money and fame.
But above all, Mumbai is a city of extreme contrasts. Here, just metres apart, you'll find billionaires' towers (including the most expensive private residence in the world) and Dharavi, one of the densest informal settlements in Asia; the luxury of the Taj hotel and the poverty of those who sleep on the pavements; the mansions of Malabar Hill and the suburban trains where millions of workers squeeze in every morning. That brutal inequality sits alongside an astonishing vitality and resilience: Mumbai works, moves and dreams non-stop.
The city has also been through very hard times: the communal riots of the 1990s, catastrophic monsoon floods and, above all, the terrorist attacks of November 2008, when a group of terrorists who arrived by sea attacked several landmark sites over three days (CSMT station, the Taj hotel, a Jewish centre), killing more than 160 people and shocking the country. True to its character, Mumbai recovered and carried on. Today it faces huge challenges in infrastructure, housing, traffic and the environment, while it builds metro lines, coastal roads and skyscrapers. For travellers, it remains the gateway to western India and one of the most human, chaotic and fascinating cities on the planet: a living portrait of all the Indias, beating on the shores of the Arabian Sea.
