City History ನಗರದ ಇತಿಹಾಸ
From a ninth-century hero stone that first names "Bengaluru" to a global technology capital — the story of the city in four eras.
Origins & Early Dynasties
3 pagesThe land around Bengaluru was settled long before the city had a name. Inscriptions, temples and tanks tell the early story.
Where the Name "Bengaluru" Comes From
The 9th-century Begur inscription and the popular "town of boiled beans" legend.
Gangas, Cholas & Hoysalas
The dynasties that ruled the Bengaluru plateau before the city existed.
Ancient Temples & Water Tanks
How a dry plateau with no big river built a network of hundreds of tanks.
Kempegowda & the Founding
4 pagesIn 1537 a Vijayanagara chieftain built a mud fort and laid out the market streets that still form the old city.
Kempegowda I, Founder of Bengaluru
The Yelahanka chieftain who founded the city in 1537.
The Four Kempegowda Towers
Watchtowers traditionally said to mark the limits of the old town.
The Petes: Old Market Quarters
Chickpete, Balepete, Avenue Road and the trading streets of the 1500s.
The Bull Temple (Dodda Basavana Gudi)
A 16th-century monolithic Nandi that gives Basavanagudi its name.
Mysore Kingdom & British Era
7 pagesBijapur, the Mughals, the Wodeyars, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and the British Cantonment.
From Bijapur to the Wodeyars (1638–1759)
How the town changed hands four times in a century.
Hyder Ali & Tipu Sultan
The stone fort, Lalbagh and the Summer Palace.
The Siege of Bangalore, 1791
Lord Cornwallis takes the fort in the Third Anglo-Mysore War.
The Cantonment & "Civil and Military Station"
How a British garrison created MG Road, Brigade Road and Frazer Town.
The Commission Years (1831–1881)
Fifty years of direct British administration and the move of the capital to Bengaluru.
The 1898 Plague & Planned Extensions
An epidemic that led to Basavanagudi and Malleshwaram, India's early planned suburbs.
Electric Lights & the Indian Institute of Science
Hydroelectric power from Shivanasamudra and the founding of IISc.
Modern Bengaluru
6 pagesState capital, public-sector industry, the Garden City, and then the Silicon Valley of India.
Capital of Mysore State & Karnataka
Unification of 1956, the Vidhana Soudha and the renaming of the state in 1973.
HAL, ISRO & the Public-Sector City
Aircraft, telephones, machine tools and space: the industrial base behind the boom.
The Silicon Valley of India
Electronic City, Infosys, Texas Instruments and the startup era.
The Garden City & Pensioners' Paradise
The old nicknames and the green spaces that earned them.
Bengaluru Karaga
The city's oldest festival, led by the Thigala community.
Namma Metro & the Growing City
From the first metro line in 2011 to the Greater Bengaluru era.