Howrah is a district in the Indian state of West Bengal. Howrah city is located on the western bank of the Hooghly River. Administratively Howrah city lies within Howrah district, and is the headquarters of the Howrah Sadar subdivision. It is also part of the Kolkata Metropolitan Area, with development from the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority. Howrah city is an important transportation hub and suburb of Kolkata. It is also a gateway to old Kolkata via Howrah railway station and Howrah Bridge.

The Hooghly River or popularly called Ganga or Kati-Ganga in the Puranas, is a river that rises close to Giria, which lies north of Baharampur and Palashi in Murshidabad. It is the western distributary of the Ganges. The main course of the Ganges then flows into Bangladesh as the Padma. A man-made canal, built in the 1960s and early-1970s at Farakka, connects the Ganges, flowing through Malda, to the Hooghly to bring the abundant waters of the Himalayan river to the comparatively narrow river that rises in eastern West Bengal.