Hampi

Hampi, a temple town in northern Karnataka, was once the capital of the historical Vijayanagara Dynasty. This quaint place, lying amidst striking ruins of the past, has been receiving tourists from far off for ages. The magnificence of the ruins of temples and other structures of Vijayanagar, dating back to 1500 AD, is the main attraction of this place. According to some accounts, Hampi used to be the second largest city of the world.

Hampi used to be an important part of Vijayanagara city (1343 – 1565), which was later ruined but this beautiful place commonly referred as the temple town still exists. It always remained a priority for different rulers because of its geographical location. It is covered by impregnable hills on three sides and Tungabhadra River flows on the fourth side making this place secure and also magnificent from the scenic point of view.

Paradise for wanderlust folks

Hampi is a house to many temples which makes it an important religious center. This place is worth visiting since it holds great significance archeologically and also architecturally. Moreover, it is wonderfully enclosed with lofty mountains and smoothly flowing River which adds up even more to its already present attractiveness. According to statistics, this is the most searched place on Google in Karnataka.

Hampi and its nearby region remained a contested and fought-over region claimed by the local chiefs, the Hyderabad Muslim nizams, the Maratha Hindu kings, and Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan of Mysore through the 18th century.^[39] In 1799, Tipu Sultan was defeated and killed when the British forces and Wadiyar dynasty aligned. The region then came under British influence.^[39] The ruins of Hampi were surveyed in 1800 by Scottish Colonel Colin Mackenzie, first Surveyor General of India. Mackenzie wrote that the Hampi site was abandoned and only wildlife live there. The 19th-century speculative articles by historians who followed Mackenzie blamed the 18th-century armies of Hyder Ali and the Marathas for the damage to the Hampi monuments

  LINK

• Hampi Museum, Archaeological Survey of India
• Group of Monuments at Hampi, UNESCO World Heritage List
• Vijayanagara Research Project, Penn Museum
• Fields of Victory: Vijayanagara Archived 21 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Kathleen Morrison, UC Berkeley