What makes Mumbai’s Regal cinema truly special

In October 2023, the Regal completed 90 years as “The Theatre Magnificent” of Bombay. Less than a decade ago, newspapers were rueing its imminent closure, but its inclusion in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Victorian Gothic/Art Deco buildings in 2018 ensured it is still the last but one of its kind still standing.

Its ongoing presence reminds one of a cosmopolitan age, a collegial age, where people across class and caste chose to spend three hours in a darkened hall, carried away on flights of fancy made in Hollywood, Europe or the many cine-studios of Bombay itself.

These 90 years are as significant to the city as is the Regal. More than a few thousand buildings of the same vintage (and style) continue to be functional and have been inhabited more or less nonstop since the time they came up.

The Regal is one amongst several cinema theatres that came up in Bombay in the boom years between the wars. Designed in 1933 by Charles Stevens, son of FW Stevens, architect of the Victoria Terminus (now known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) and the Bombay Municipal Corporation buildings, it was the first of a golden quartet, along with the Metro, the Eros and the New Empire.

Now an...

Read more