Chandigarh Museums and Rose Garden

Lon had to go to Chandigarh on business, so we made a weekend trip of it (weekends meaning Sunday). Chandigarh is an interesting place. It is a planned city to replace the capital of the Indian state of Punjab after Partition and Independence. (The capital had been Lahore, but that city went to Pakistan.) Since then, Punjab has been split into two states: Punjab and Haryana. Chandigarh is the capital of both.

The final plan for Chandigarh was set by the French architect Le Corbusier and is a set of rectangular "sectors" that are separated by major thoroughfares. All structures are reinforced concrete and have that 1950s-60s aesthetic that hasn't worn particularly well. India's extremes of heat, moisture, and "dust" have also taken their toll. But the city has plenty of green space, and the interior of the sectors is reasonably pedestrian-friendly.

The layout of Chandigarh is found on every manhole cover in the city.

On Sunday, we visited the Government Museums. The art museum has a nice collection of antiquities (stone and brass), miniature paintings, textiles, and some contemporary art. The architectural museum is really a "History of Chandigarh" and told the story of its planning and construction. The natural history museum is an eclectic mixture of natural history art, fossils (esp. dinosaurs), and evolution of man artifacts.

The textiles gallery had a nice collection of pachisi ("Parcheesi") "boards" -- highly decorated textiles that could be easily stored in a small space. Pachisi has been played in India since at least 500 CE.

The natural history museum had a large gallery of these bird embroideries. Think a hundred Audubon-style bird portraits embroidered rather than painted. The detail was astounding.

Monday morning we walked through the 30-acre Rose Garden that was just across the main thoroughfare from our hotel. The Rose Garden is part of the greenway that surrounds one of the small rivers in Chandigarh.

The Rose Garden. Our hotel is the building on the other side of the street.

Another view of the Rose Garden.

Rose-ringed parakeets and a pigeon avail themselves of food set out for them. Squirrels were helping themselves to the grain as well.