Joseph Baptista Gardens

Joseph Baptista Gardens, known locally as Mazagaon Gardens, is a 1.5-acre park on Bhandarwada hill in Mazagaon, South Mumbai, behind Dockyard Road station. From about 32 metres up it looks out over Mumbai harbour and the business district to the south. Cycas, ixora, bougainvillea and hibiscus grow here, and the park is used mostly by local residents, joggers, couples, older people and students looking for a quiet place to read.

The British built Mazagon Fort on this basalt outcrop in 1680, but the Siddi ruler Yakut Khan razed it. In 1884 the hill became a storage reservoir for water pumped from Vihar Lake, and a public garden was laid out on top between 1880 and 1884 by Municipal Commissioner John Hay Grant, whose name it first carried. Shortly after independence it was renamed after Joseph Baptista, a freedom activist from Mazagaon.