New Market Kolkata: Timings, What to Buy and How to Shop
Photo: Paul Hamilton, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped), via Wikimedia Commons
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New Market, Kolkata, the week before the pujas.
Half of Kolkata comes here for something new to wear.
A clock tower and two thousand stalls
New Market is a long red-brick building with Gothic arches and a clock tower over the entrance. Inside, the halls run into each other: cloth and saris, shoes, toys, spices, dried fruit, cheese, flowers, steel kitchenware. Each lane keeps to its own trade. There are more than two thousand stalls, and in the week before Durga Puja most of them stay open late.
Puja shopping
Before the festival every Bengali family buys new clothes, one outfit for each day of the puja if they can. Shopping for them is a festival of its own. Families come in groups, choose cloth, take it to a tailor, and come back for gifts. The market hands out the city’s clothes for the week. The pavements of Lindsay Street, outside, turn into a second market of their own.
An old market with a long memory
The market opened in 1874 as a covered bazaar for the British part of Calcutta. Its official name is still Sir Stuart Hogg Market, after the city’s chairman at the time. Part of it burned in 1985 and was rebuilt. Inside is Nahoum’s, a Jewish bakery founded in 1902, which has had its shop inside the market since 1916. Its fruit cake is famous at Christmas.
How to get there
The market is in central Kolkata, a short walk from Esplanade and Park Street metro stations. Yellow taxis and app cabs will drop you on Lindsay Street. Go in the late morning on a weekday. Evenings in puja week are crowded enough that moving between lanes is slow.
How the market grew
In the years after 1857, Calcutta's British residents wanted a market of their own. The Calcutta Corporation bought land on Lindsay Street, pulled down the old Fenwick's Bazaar, and held a design competition. Richard Roskell Bayne, an architect with the East Indian Railway, won it. The market opened on New Year's Day, 1874, as the city's first municipal market.
Everyone called it the new market, and the name stuck. In 1903 it was formally named after Sir Stuart Hogg, who had been both police commissioner and chairman of the corporation when it was built. The northern block was added in 1909. The clock tower came later, in the 1930s, shipped out from Huddersfield in England.
Fire has been the market's great enemy. A blaze in December 1985 gutted the north-west section, and another in July 2011 damaged part of it again. Each time it was rebuilt, and the trades went back to their own lanes.
Lane by lane
Saris, dress lengths and ready-made clothes take up the most space. Shoes and leather have lanes of their own. Further in are the food lanes: spices, tea, dry fruit, pickles and cheese. Ask for Bandel cheese, a small, smoked, salty cheese that came from the old Portuguese settlement at Bandel, upriver, and is now hard to find outside this market.
Nahoum's, the Jewish bakery, is in the food section. Its rich fruit cake sells out at Christmas, but the brownies, cheese samosas and macaroons are there all year. After the market, the Victoria Memorial is a short taxi ride south across the Maidan.
Before you go
- Porters with baskets will offer to guide you. Agree a fee first, or say no politely.
- Prices in the cloth lanes are a starting point. Bargain gently.
- Many shops close on Sundays. Check before you go.
- Keep your phone and wallet in a front pocket in the crowded lanes.
At closing time the shutters come down one by one, and the clock over the gate keeps the time for an empty street.
Plan your visit
| Opening hours | Roughly 10 am to 8 pm on weekdays, closing earlier on Saturday. Individual shops vary; check before you go. |
|---|---|
| Closed on | Sunday, for the main market building. Some outer shops and the Lindsay Street pavement stalls stay open. |
| How to reach | A short walk from Esplanade or Park Street metro stations. Taxis and app cabs drop at Lindsay Street. |
| What to buy | Saris and dress cloth, shoes and leather, spices, tea, dried fruit, Bandel cheese, and cakes from the old bakery. |
| Bargaining | Expected in the cloth and leather lanes and at pavement stalls; open at about half the asking price and settle somewhere between. Food shops and the bakery have fixed prices. |
Open New Market, Lindsay Street, Kolkata, West Bengal in Google Maps
Questions people ask
What are New Market's opening hours?
Most shops open around 10 am and close around 8 pm on weekdays, earlier on Saturday. The main building is closed on Sunday. Times vary from shop to shop, so check before you go.
Is New Market open on Sunday?
The main market building is closed on Sunday. Some shops around it and the pavement stalls on Lindsay Street stay open, but the lanes inside are shuttered.
What is New Market's official name?
Sir Stuart Hogg Market, given in 1903. Many people still call it Hogg Market, but most just say New Market.
What is Bandel cheese?
A small, round, smoked cheese, dry and salty, first made by the Portuguese at Bandel on the Hooghly. Only a few stalls in New Market sell it.
Read next
Written by Muthu, editor of Aura of India. Sources: The Telegraph: Hoggsworth, 150 years after its inauguration, Calcutta's New Market still remains new, The Telegraph: The curious problem of Calcutta police commissioner Sir Stuart Saunders Hogg, The Indian Express: This bakery offers a taste of history; of cakes, too. Last verified: 13 October 2026.
Your turn: What is the one thing you always buy at New Market, and which lane do you find it in?
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