Group of Monuments at Hampi

Boulder-strewn and austere, Hampi was the final capital of Vijayanagar, the last great Hindu kingdom of the south. Between the 14th and 16th centuries its fabulously wealthy princes raised Dravidian temples and palaces that awed travellers — until the Deccan Muslim confederacy took the city in 1565, pillaged it for six months and left it to abandonment. The ruins were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 1986.