Bangalore

On the southern Deccan plateau, Bangalore grew around a fortified town and its market quarters. The name appears in a Kannada inscription of 890 at Begur, long before the region passed through the hands of the Cholas, Hoysalas and Vijayanagara rulers.

In 1537 Kempe Gowda, a chief under Vijayanagara, built a mud fort and laid out the town’s petes, or market districts. Its two main streets met at Doddapete square. After Vijayanagara’s decline Kempe Gowda's line held on until 1638, when an army of the Bijapur sultanate took the town and gave it as an estate to Shahaji. The Mughals later sold it to the Wodeyars of Mysore; Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan subsequently held it before the British captured it during the Mysore wars.