Finding the following minor religious sights walks you through some of Kolkata’s most vibrantly chaotic alleys teeming with traders, rickshaw couriers and baggage wallahs with impossibly huge packages balanced on their heads. Hidden away amid the paper-merchants of Old China Bazaar St, the Armenian Church of Nazareth was founded in 1707 and is claimed to be Kolkata’s oldest place of Christian worship. The larger 1797 Portuguese-Catholic Holy Rosary Cathedral has eye-catching crown-topped side towers and an interior whose font is festively kitsch.
Kolkata’s Jewish community once numbered around 30,000 but these days barely 40 ageing co-religionists turn up at Maghen David Synagogue . Around the corner, the Neveh Shalome Synagogue is almost invisible behind shop stalls. Once you've fought your way across Brabourne St, descend Pollock St between very colourful stalls selling baloons, tinsel and plastic plants to the decrepit Pollock St Post Office (once a grand Jewish school building). Opposite, BethEl Synagogue has a facade that looks passingly similar to a 1930s cinema and a fine colonnaded interior but to get into this or the other synagogues you'll generally need to have pre-contacted the Community Affairs office at 63 Park St (tel 9831054669).
Paralel to Pollock St, wider Ezra St has a brilliant old perfumerie at #55 just before the Shree Cutchi Jain Temple. Then follow Parsee Church St east to reach Old Chinatown or swing back up ever-fascinating Rabindra Sarani to find the shop-clad 1926 Nakhoda Mosque that was loosely modelled on Akbar’s Mausoleum at Sikandra.
