Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, is India's largest city and the gateway to eastern India. By Indian standards Calcutta is relatively new (a mere 300 years old) and with echoes of a European city planted on the soil of Asia - noisy, crowded and inexhaustibly vibrant. In 1773, the capital of British India was transferred here from Chennai and it grew into the second city of the Empire. The Raj is commemorated to this day in the 'City of Palaces' (likened at the time to St Petersburg and London) by some splendidly grand but now crumbling imperial architecture built around the 'maidan', a large lawned expanse at the heart of the city. In its way today's cosmopolitan Calcutta (which has a lively cultural scene) is India in microcosm - sometimes daunting, but always 'alive' and absorbing.