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About Hooghly Tourism
The district
of Hooghly is just 47 km north of Kolkata and is steeped in history and
heritage. Its headquarters are at Chinsurah. The several small but important
towns in the district are each a testimony to the rule of foreign settlers such
as the British and Portuguese at Hooghly, the
Dutch at Chinsurah, the French at Chandannagore, and the Germans and Austrians
at Bhadreswar. The Portuguese were the first to settle here in 1537, but were defeated
by Shah Jahan in 1632. The British East India Company then followed and set up a
factory here in 1651. Chandernagore was once a French colony and is still influenced
by French language and culture. Chinsurah was a Dutch settlement from 1656 to
1825. It was later exchanged by the Dutch for the British-held Indonesian island of Sumatra in 1825. The Hooghly (as the GangaRiver
is called here) dominates the landscape and people use ferries to cross over
from one town to another.
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