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View of Banana plantations from Matanga Hill

“The city is such that the pupil of the eye has never seen a place like it, and ear of intelligence has never been informed that existed anything to equal it in the World.”
Abdul Razaak, 1443

Vijayanagara, the “City of Victory,” was the greatest of all Hindu capitals of South India. Its impressive ruins in central Karnataka are known best as Hampi, after the name of a local village. Since 1980 an international group of researchers has been documenting and interpreting the remains of Vijayanagara. The following pages describe Vijayanagara Research Project's (VRP) investigations and interpretations, while also offering essential background information on the history of the city and the empire of which it was the capital, the urban layout of the site, and the variety of its military, ceremonial, civic and religious architecture.

In recognition of the significance of Vijayanagara, the “Hampi Group of Monuments” was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987. However, this gesture has not removed the dangers that the site now faces from unchecked development and the lack of an effective conservation management plan.

Any comments or queries should be directed to johnmfritz@gmail.com

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Text © John M. Fritz
and George Michell;
Photographs by the authors, John Gollings, Clare Arni, Andrew Bauer, Robert Brubaker and William Bugel; Designed by Surendra Kumar