Explore Mumbai in Google Street View

Mumbai was seven separate islands. They were joined by land reclamation across two centuries, which is why the city occupies a narrow peninsula pointing south with water on both sides and almost no room to grow sideways. Everything about the density here follows from that geography, and you can read it in the imagery: the further south you go, the older and tighter the street pattern becomes.

The colonial core around Fort and Ballard Estate is the most coherent architectural set in the country. Victorian Gothic and Art Deco stand side by side along Oval Maidan, with the High Court and university on one side and a long row of 1930s apartment blocks on the other, facing each other across a cricket pitch. The pairing is a UNESCO listing and it is best appreciated by standing between them, which the imagery lets you do.

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus is the building to look at closely. It is a working railway station used by millions, built in 1888 in a style that mixes Victorian Gothic with Mughal detail, and it is covered in carving that rewards zooming in. Street View gets you close enough to the facade to see the stone animals on the columns.

Marine Drive is the walk. A three kilometre curve of promenade along Back Bay, lined with Art Deco buildings, and at night the streetlights along the curve are why it is called the Queen's Necklace. It was captured on foot, and following it from Nariman Point round to Chowpatty is the single best continuous route in the city.

Dharavi is part of Mumbai and the imagery includes its main roads. It is one of the most densely populated places on earth and also a substantial manufacturing economy, with recycling, leather and pottery operations working out of the same buildings people live in. Seeing it from the main roads in the same session as the Deco of Marine Drive tells you something accurate about how this city is arranged.

One practical note. Mumbai's traffic means the camera car moved slowly, and the imagery is unusually rich as a result: you can see individual shopfronts, handcarts, hoardings and people in a level of detail that faster capture elsewhere loses. It is one of the few cities where the density of the place actually improves the imagery.