Monsoon at David Hall: Fort Kochi's Quietest Art Room

There is a particular pleasure to Fort Kochi in the rains. The tour crowds thin, the sea turns the colour of slate, and the old lime-washed buildings look their most themselves under a grey sky. If you are looking for somewhere to duck the drizzle and slow right down, one address rewards it better than most: David Hall, on the edge of the Parade Ground, where a monsoon painting show is quietly on the walls.

A show made for the season

The exhibition, titled Monsoon Mindscapes, is up at the David Hall Art Gallery in Fort Kochi. It is exactly the kind of programming the venue does best - a small, considered painting show timed to the mood of the moment rather than a blockbuster. Wandering a gallery like this while the rain ticks on the tiled roof outside is a very different experience from the same rooms in dry, busy December, and arguably a better one. Come in the late morning, when the light through the tall windows is soft and the space is at its emptiest.

The building is half the reason to go

David Hall is not a purpose-built white cube; it is a piece of Kochi history that happens to hang art. It was built around 1695 by the Dutch East India Company, which makes it well over three centuries old. Its first notable resident was Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede, the Dutch commander whose fascination with Malabar's plant life produced the twelve-volume Hortus Malabaricus, one of the earliest serious botanical records of the region. The hall later took its name from David Koder, a Jewish businessman who lived there in a subsequent era.

Architecturally it is unmistakably Dutch: walls close to three feet thick, a timber roof whose sweeping shape is often likened to an upturned boat, and a courtyard garden of old trees that stays cool even in high summer. That garden is part of the draw - the hall runs an easygoing cafe in and around it, so a gallery visit can slide naturally into a slow coffee out of the rain.

Where it sits on the Fort Kochi map

The Parade Ground location puts David Hall within an easy stroll of most of what people come to the old town for. You can fold it into a longer wander - the same afternoon can take in the church, the Chinese fishing nets and a few of the spice-scented lanes further in. If you like your art with a side of walking, our Mattancherry heritage walk stitches together the neighbouring quarter, and there is more monsoon-season programming rounded up in our look at Kochi's current gallery shows.

How to make the most of a rainy visit

A few insider notes. Go on a weekday morning if you can - Fort Kochi's galleries are at their most contemplative before lunch, and the monsoon keeps the day-trippers away. Carry an umbrella rather than a raincoat; you will want your hands free to linger. And do not rush the courtyard, because half the point of David Hall is the pause it offers between the paintings and the weather. Exhibitions here rotate every few weeks, so a quick check that Monsoon Mindscapes is still hanging before you set out never hurts.

Getting there is part of the pleasure too. Skip the road and come across the water on the Fort Kochi ferry - the harbour crossing in a passing shower is its own little piece of theatre, and it drops you a short walk from the Parade Ground. If the corporation follows through on its new plan for free Ro-Ro rides for women, that approach may soon cost nothing at all. Either way, arriving by boat sets exactly the unhurried tone a rainy morning at David Hall deserves.

For more ways to spend a wet week in the city, from galleries to the greenest corners of the old town, browse our things to do in Kochi.