Just around the corner from the museum, the Asiatic Society at 1 Park St, established in 1784 by Orientalists including Sir William Jones, houses a huge collection of around 150,000 books and 60,000 ancient manuscripts, some of which date back to the seventh century. The society has a reading room open to the public (Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; free) and a gallery of art and antiquities with paintings by Rubens and Reynolds, a large collection of coins and one of Ashoka's stone edicts.

 

Around 2km along Park Street from the Maidan, the disused but recently restored Park Street Cemetery is one of the city's most haunting memorials to its imperial past. Inaugurated in 1767, it is the oldest in Calcutta, holding a wonderful concentration of pyramids, obelisks, pavilions, urns and headstones, under which many well-known Brits lie buried. The epitaphs make fascinating reading.