The Ripon Building is named after a Viceroy who got an unusually warm send-off. When Lord Ripon left India in 1884, Madras cried *Ripon Engal Appan*: Ripon is our father.

The building came later. It was built in 1911 for the Greater Chennai Corporation, founded in 1688 and the oldest municipal body in India. Its white columns are neo-Palladian, loosely inspired by Palladio’s Basilica in Vicenza, yet the beams behind them were made in Britain from Indian steel.

VoiceMap’s tours pause at Ripon’s black bronze statue in the garden. Then they read the facade as imperial design, showing how a style from Northern Italy became the look of public buildings across the colonies.