Chapel Road street art, Bandra

Bandra grew out of a cluster of Roman Catholic fishing villages established during Portuguese rule in the region, and the older parts of the neighbourhood still carry something of that original layout: narrow winding lanes, low bungalows set close together, and small wayside crosses placed at street corners, a tradition that continues in the area's East Indian Catholic community to this day. Chapel Road runs directly through one of these older residential pockets, close to Ranwar, one of the original hamlets that made up Bandra long before the wider city eventually grew up around it.

Over roughly the past decade, murals have been painted across many of the bungalow walls lining Chapel Road and the surrounding lanes, gradually turning what was once an ordinary residential stretch into something closer to an open-air gallery of sorts. The subjects and styles vary considerably from one wall to the next, since different artists have worked on different buildings at different times without any single overarching plan, and the collection is not curated as one fixed exhibition; individual pieces genuinely come and go as walls are eventually repainted or buildings change hands.

Walking the lanes takes you past the small crosses standing at several corners, a visible marker of the area's Catholic heritage, alongside the older low-rise bungalow architecture that has largely survived despite fairly heavy redevelopment elsewhere across Bandra. The scale of the area is small and entirely walkable, and there is no single fixed route to follow: wandering off into the side lanes running off Chapel Road tends to turn up considerably more murals than sticking rigidly to the main road alone ever would, particularly once you cross into Ranwar proper.

The walk finishes particularly well by continuing on afterwards to Bandstand, Bandra's sea-facing promenade, where the murals eventually give way to open views of the sea and, further off in the distance, the ruins of Bandra Fort standing out on the headland. It makes a natural endpoint for an afternoon that starts inland among the murals and street crosses and ends outdoors by the water, with nothing further to plan or organise beyond simply continuing the walk itself in that direction until the lanes finally open out onto the seafront and the promenade proper.

Questions travellers ask

Is it free to visit?

Yes, walking the lanes and viewing the murals costs nothing at all, since they are painted directly on the exterior of private buildings that remain fully visible from the public street outside. There is no ticket, entry gate or fixed route to follow, and the whole appeal of the area is that it can genuinely be wandered freely on foot, at whatever pace you like.

How long does it take?

An hour to two hours is fairly typical, depending mainly on how many side lanes you choose to explore and whether you go on to Bandstand afterwards or not. It is easy enough to shorten the walk by sticking closely to Chapel Road itself, or to extend it comfortably by wandering further into Ranwar and the surrounding older lanes nearby.

Is it a residential area?

Yes, the lanes around Chapel Road form an active residential neighbourhood, with real people living inside the bungalows whose exterior walls happen to carry the murals. Visitors are generally welcome to walk through and photograph the street art, but it is worth keeping noise down and staying mindful that this remains someone's actual home, rather than a purpose-built attraction laid out for tourists.

Will the murals still be there?

Some will and some genuinely will not. Street art in this area is not fixed or formally protected in any way, and individual walls are repainted or replaced over time as buildings change hands or particular artists return later with newer work. The general character of the area, as somewhere murals are simply common, has held fairly steadily for roughly a decade now.

How do you get there?

Chapel Road is about a 10-minute walk from Bandra station on the Western line, most directly reached via Hill Road from the station side. It also sits close enough to both Bandstand and Carter Road that the walk is easy to combine naturally with a wider afternoon spent around Bandra, without needing any further transport in between, once you have made your own way there on foot.