Persian and European visitors to Vijayanagara provide vivid descriptions of life at the capital during the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries. Their accounts of the spectacular ceremonies of the nine-day Mahanavami festival to which the rulers invited them are particularly vivid. The foreigners also reported on the bazaars, temples and palaces of the city, some of which can still be identified. Their record of local historical traditions has proved invaluable in piecing together the chronology of the city and empire. Their reports on the precious stones, including diamonds, textiles and other luxury goods on sale in the markets testify to the role of the capital as one of the greatest emporia in South India. (Sewell gives translations of these travel accounts in, A Forgotten Empire and see, Fritz and Michell, Hampi, both listed in the Bibliography).

Nicolo Conti, an Italian, was at Vijayanagara in about 1420, just after the accession of Devaraya I. The first known foreign traveller, he mentions the fortifications of the city and the thousands of men employed in the army of the rulers. The next visitor in about 1443 was Abdul Razzaq, an envoy of Shah Rukh, the Timurid sultan of Herat. Abdul Razzaq noticed seven rings of ramparts protecting the city, but not all these can be traced today. He also gives details about the ceremonies of the rulers, and the processions of the Mahanavami festival. (Reliefs on the Hazara Rama temple in the Royal Centre carved about the same time may portray scenes from this festival.)

The most detailed chronicles of Vijayanagara are those provided by two Portuguese visitors, one a soldier and the other a trader in horses. (The rulers were always in need of horses imported from the Arabian peninsular. After the Portuguese captured this trade from the Arabs in the early 16th century, Portuguese traders frequently visited the capital.) Domingo Paes was at Vijayanagara in about 1520-22, during the reign of Krishnadevaraya . The visitor gives invaluable information on the walls, gates, streets and markets of the city, as well as the major temples of the city, including the Virupaksha at Hampi, together with its colonnaded bazaar. Paes describes the Mahanavami festival at some length, beginning with the preparations within the king’s palace where ceremonies were held at the House of Victory, all hung with precious cloths. According to Paes, the festival included numerous processions of animals, warriors and courtly women, as well as wrestling matches, fireworks and other entertainments. The climax was the review of the troops that was held at some distance outside the city. The description of the king’s palace with which Paes’s account concludes seems to apply to Krishnadevaraya’s new residence in what is now Hospet.

Fernao Nuniz, a Portuguese horse-trader, composed his account around 1536-37. He was in the capital during the reign of Achyutaraya and may have been present at earlier battles fought by Krishnadevaraya. This visitor was particularly interested in the history of Vijayanagara, especially the foundation of the city, the subsequent careers of three dynasties of rulers, and the battles that they fought with the Deccan sultans and Orissan Rayas. Nunez, too, gives details of the Mahanavami festival, noting admiringly the extravagant jewels worn by the courtly women, as well as the thousands of women in the king’s service.

Cesare Frederici, an Italian traveller who spent seven months at Vijayanagara in 1567, two years after the city was sacked, suggests that the capital was only partly destroyed and that Tirumala of the Aravidu dynasty intended to re-establish the Vijayanagara capital there. This attempt turned out to be unsuccessful and the city was eventually abandoned for good.

After Frederici, no foreign accounts of the city have come down come down to us until that of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, the Scottish antiquarian who visited Vijayanagara in 1799. Mackenzie’s description of the site, accompanied by a watercolour map and views, represent the first modern step to study the ruins.