National Gallery of Modern Art, Cowasji Jehangir Hall

Set at the busy junction most people still call Regal Circle, where Colaba Causeway runs into Mahatma Gandhi Road, the National Gallery of Modern Art occupies one of South Mumbai's quietly confident Edwardian buildings.

• The domed Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall opened in 1911, endowed by the Parsi philanthropist whose name it carries and generally attributed to the city architect George Wittet, and for most of the twentieth century it worked as Bombay's civic auditorium — lectures, recitals, prize-givings and public meetings beneath the rotunda.
• In 1996 the hall reopened, thoroughly remodelled within, as the Mumbai wing of the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Union Ministry of Culture's network devoted to modern and contemporary Indian art.
• The conversion is the real surprise.
• Behind the columned façade the interior has been hollowed into a bright central well ringed by a spiral of gentle ramps and tiered galleries, so a visit unfolds as one slow continuous climb rather than a march through boxed rooms — you keep catching the dome overhead and the painting you passed two levels below.
• Displays rotate rather than sit fixed, drawn from the national collection and from large touring shows: on a given month you might find the Bombay Progressives and their contemporaries, Bengal School works on paper, modern sculpture and print portfolios, or a single-artist retrospective filling three levels.
• Because so much depends on what is installed, it is worth checking the current programme before you set out.
• Practically, it is one of the easiest heritage stops in the Fort precinct.
• The gallery keeps late-morning to early-evening hours and closes on Mondays and public holidays; there is a modest ticket at the counter, with lower rates usually offered to Indian visitors and students.
• Bags go to the cloakroom, photography inside is generally restricted, and the air-conditioned ramps make a welcome refuge from a humid afternoon.
• It sits within a five-minute walk of the Kala Ghoda crescent, the big city museum, the old college buildings and the Sassoon library, and the whole quarter turns into a pedestrian gallery during the February arts festival.
• For food, the lanes around Kala Ghoda, Fort and Churchgate cover every kind of cooking, a great deal of it not vegetarian, so the reliable method is to look for a board that clearly says pure vegetarian and confirm at the counter before you order.
• Within a ten to twelve minute walk there are Gujarati and Rajasthani thali houses towards Churchgate, Udupi-style dosa, idli and filter-coffee counters tucked into the office lanes, and juice and sandwich stalls for something quick between galleries.
• Mumbai's street staples — vada pav, pav bhaji, sev puri, ragda pattice — are vegetarian by default, though at a mixed stall it is still worth asking what else shares the griddle.