India’s oldest zoo and Calcutta’s favourite winter attraction turns 150 on Tuesday.

The Zoological Garden, Alipore or chiriakhana, as Calcuttans lovingly call it, has lined up an elaborate celebration on the day and a series of activities throughout the next year.

The zoo was established on September 24, 1875. The Prince of Wales Zoological Garden, as it was called, was thrown open to the public the next year.

A statue of Ram Brahma Sanyal, the first Indian superintendent of the zoo, will be unveiled on Tuesday.

Sanyal, a legendary naturalist and zookeeper, was an assistant to Carl Louis Schwendler, a German electrician who came to India to take up a senior post in the telegraph department. Schwendler had a passion for wildlife and was a member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Living in Calcutta, he had set up a private menagerie.

Sanyal was appointed as an ordinary worker at the zoo in 1876.

The zoo website says: “The park was initially run by an honorary managing committee which included Schwendler and the famous botanist George King (former superintendent of the Shibpur Botanical Garden). The first Indian superintendent of the zoo was Ram Brahma Sanyal, who did much to improve the standing of the Alipore Zoo and achieved good captive breeding success in an era when such initiatives were rarely heard of.

“One such success story of the zoo was the live birth of the rare Sumatran Rhinoceros in 1889. The next pregnancy in captivity occurred at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1997 but ended with a miscarriage. Cincinnati Zoo finally recorded a live birth in 2001,” it says.

Subhankar Sengupta, the present director of Alipore Zoo, said: “Sanyal’s teachings are still like gospel for zookeepers. It is an honour for us to be able to honour the man”.

Sanyal’s seminal work, A Handbook of the Management of Animals in Captivity in Lower Bengal, published in 1892, is still followed across the country and many parts of the world.

“Taking Sanyal’s legacy forward, Alipore Zoo has also been a pioneer in captive breeding programmes, from rhinos to giraffes to critically endangered brow-antlered deer of Manipur,” said Sengupta.

Tuesday’s programme will be presided over by forest minister Birbaha Hansda.

Firhad Hakim, the mayor of Calcutta, Mala Roy, Lok Sabha MP, and Niraj Singhal, head of the forest force, Bengal, will be among the attendees.

The new sesquicentenary gates, on Alipore Road and National Library Avenue, will be inaugurated on Tuesday.

A memorabilia book looking back at the 150 years of the park will also be unveiled, said an official.

“Alipore Zoo has recorded several firsts in the history of Indian zoos and gardens. The book celebrates the landmark moments,” the official said.

The rich and famous in and beyond Bengal have patronised Alipore Zoo from the outset.

The patrons range from Raja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh, the Mullick family of north Calcutta, Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV of Mysore and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh, who had been deposed to Calcutta by the British.