Calcutta: Visitors to the Victoria Memorial Hall will be allowed to take photographs inside the galleries from May 15. So long, the most iconic edifice of the city could only be photographed from outside.

Visitors who photograph the galleries will not be allowed to use flashes or tripods.

Secretary and curator Jayanta Sengupta said the lure of photographing the galleries "could further increase footfall to the most visited monument in India".

Around 36 lakh people buy tickets to visit the Victoria Memorial museum every year. Schoolchildren, VIPs and others who are exempt from buying tickets are among regular visitors, too.

The annual footfall at the marble monument touches 70-80 lakh. On December 31, it had drawn 42,118 visitors.

A public notice issued by administrative officer Nitish Kumar Das on May 4 stated that the price of the museum ticket had been increased from Rs 20 to Rs 30 for Indians. Foreigners have to pay Rs 500.

Curator Sengupta said photography had been prohibited in the galleries for so long because it was thought that people would not visit the museum if they could see pictures of the exhibits.

"The theory has been found to be untrue. The more people click pictures and post them on social media, the more number of people will see them and would want to visit to see the things for real. Allowing photography will only increase footfall," Sengupta said.

The Victoria Memorial Hall has a unique collection of visual arts, including architecture, sculpture, painting and gardening.

It has 28,394 artefacts displayed in nine galleries, which narrate the history of our nation over three centuries beginning 1650AD.

Among the most celebrated collections are works of European artists of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Johann Zoffany, Joshua Reynolds, Balthazar Solvyns, Thomas Hickey, John Fleming and Samuel Davis.

The Quran handwritten by Aurangzeb, the Persian translation of the tale of Nala and Damayanti by Abu Faiz Faizi, a manuscript copy of Ain-i-Akbari, Kalighat paintings and Tipu Sultan's war diary are among the priceless exhibits.

The collection has recently been further enriched with the acquisition of 5,000 paintings belonging to the Bengal School of Art from Rabindra Bharati University.

The iconic monument, built in memory of Queen Victoria, was conceived by then Viceroy Lord Curzon to showcase the achievement of the empress during the high noon of imperialism. The memorial was opened to the public in 1921.