Why cities struggle to preserve their stories

Unlike Western cities such as Amsterdam, New York, or Berlin, where city museums chronicle the evolution of the metropolis itself, India's megacities do not have spaces that tell their stories

- Manoj Sharma

India's cities are repositories of layered histories — Mumbai with its colonial trading ports and textile mills, business and Bollywood glamour; Delhi with its imperial capitals and Partition scars, Kolkata with its literary salons and revolutionary past, Bengaluru with its transformation from garden city to tech powerhouse. Yet, unlike western cities such as Amsterdam, New York, or Berlin, where city museums chronicle the evolution of the metropolis itself, India's megacities do not have spaces that tell their stories.

The gap is striking. Most of roughly 1,000 museums in the country are artifact-driven, built around archaeology, natural history, or national icons. Very few tell the living, evolving story of their cities — their streets, people, dialects, food, crafts, and the architecture that has been built, demolished, and rebuilt over time.

"Cities like Delhi and Mumbai are defined not just by monuments but by migration, colonial history, post-independence growth, informal economies, neighbourhood resilience, and small-scale architectural innovations," says Delhi-based architect and urbanist Dikshu Kukreja. "Without city museums, these stories remain undocumented, creating a disconnect between people and their city's history."

Indeed, across the world, city museums are central to how urban identities are shaped and remembered. In Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Museum traces the city’s rise from a 13th-century trading hub to a multicultural metropolis, showcasing the influence of merchant guilds alongside the diverse stories of migrants who arrived centuries later.

Similarly, the Museum of the City of New York brings together the immigrant experience, Broadway posters, Wall Street finance, and civil rights movements, offering residents and tourists a layered understanding of the city’s evolution from a 17th-century Dutch trading post to a global cultural and financial hub.