Gutti

Gutti stands beneath a hill fort whose oldest surviving defences date from the late Chalukya period. Damaged inscriptions on rocks near the Narasimha temple within the fort appear to belong to the reign of the Western Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI. The fortress later came under Vijayanagara, and during the reign of Venkata II it was lost to the Qutb Shahi rulers of Golconda.

Around 1746 the Maratha commander Murari Rao captured Gutti and made it his permanent residence eight years later. He repaired the fort and decorated its smaller gateways with stucco. In 1775 Hyder Ali, the ruler of Mysore, besieged the stronghold; after two months its water supply failed and Murari Rao surrendered. Gutti later came under the East India Company.