City Parks
Maidan means "field" in Hindi and Bengali. The Kolkata Maidan was once a vast uninterrupted field, right down to the edge of the Hoogli, but is being encroached upon by the city and is fragmented by roads. The Maidan has nurtured sports like Polo, and has been the home of equestrianism, horse racing, football, cricket and rugby in Kolkata. It houses numerous clubs including the "big three" of Indian football - Mohun Bagan Athletic Club, East Bengal Football Club and Mohammedan Sporting Club along with their respective home stadiums. The arterial Chowringhee Avenue, Eden Gardens and the waterfront Millennium Park border the Maidan. The Maidan abounds with monuments and statues, the most famous of them being Shaheed Minar and the statue of ace footballer Gostho Pal. The Elliot Park and the Victoria Memorial complex are two parks which are situated in the Maidan area.
Rabindra Sarobar or "The Lake" is an artificial lake and urban park in the spirit of Central Park, New York City. The park has a lake and an island with a footbridge, an open air amphitheatre (Nazrul Mancha), a sports stadium (Rabindra Sarobar Stadium), a children's park and the rowing clubs of Calcutta Rowing Club, Bengal Rowing Club and Lake Club.
The Salt Lake Central Park is a large urban park in the centre of the Bidhan Nagar township, with a lake in the middle and information technology and government offices along its fringes.
The Indian Botanical Garden, spread over 270 acres (1.1 km2), was founded in 1786 and is the oldest "botanics" in India. Housing 50,000 species, the Botanical Survey of India and one of the world's most historically relevant herbariums, it is famous for its 250-year-old, 98-foot-tall banyan tree - which has the largest girth of any banyan tree ever recorded (1300 ft).
Alipore Zoological Gardens was founded in 1875, inaugurated by King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, then Prince of Wales. Initially started from the personal menagerie of the then Governor General of Bengal Arthur Wellesley and Carl Louis Schwendler - a German electrician, it grew based on gifts from British and Indian nobility - like Raja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh in whose honour the open air tiger enclosure is named the "Mymensingh Enclosure". The zoo was ill-reputed because of cross breeding experiments between lions and tigers to produce strains like tigons, ligers, and litigons. Adwaita was a male Aldabra Giant Tortoise in the zoo which died in March, 2006. He was reported to have been more than 250 years old - a candidate for the longest lived animal. The other success story of the zoo was a live birth of the rare Sumatran Rhinoceros in 1889. The zoo is presently downsizing to meet animal comfort requirements laid down by the Central Zoo Authority of India. The zoo is also on the flyway for several migratory birds like the Sarus Crane.
Millennium Park situated on the banks of the River Hoogli and Citizen's Park opposite Nandan are the newest city park. Other important parks includes Nalban and Nicco Park.
Read more about this topic: Places Of Interest In Kolkata
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“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
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