Pune

Pune stands at the meeting of the Mula and Mutha rivers on the western Deccan plateau. Its position near the passes of the Western Ghats linked the inland country with the ports of the Konkan. The town grew from a local centre into the seat of the Peshwas, the ministers who became the leading power in the Maratha confederacy. Its temples, markets and great residential compounds reflected the fortunes of the families who gathered around their court.

In the seventeenth century Shahaji Bhonsle held the Pune region as a grant, and his wife Jijabai and son Shivaji lived in the Lal Mahal. Shivaji later founded a Maratha kingdom; in 1663 he made a daring attack on the Mughal commander Shaista Khan in that residence. During the eighteenth century the Peshwas made Pune their principal seat. Baji Rao I built Shaniwar Wada, completed in 1732, as his residence and administrative centre. Courtiers, soldiers, merchants and financiers contributed to the growth of the town around it. Even after the Maratha defeat at Panipat in 1761, Pune remained the centre of Peshwa government. The East India Company defeated the last Peshwa in 1818 and took the city. A major fire damaged Shaniwar Wada in 1828, but its walls continued to mark the site from which the Peshwas had directed their expanding power.