Curated playlist
Metropolitan cities in India
- JodhpurJodhpur, India's Blue City, was founded in 1459 by a chieftain named Rao Jodha.
- JaipurJaipur was painted pink in 1876 to welcome a royal guest. The visitor was Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
- MaduraiIn 1921, a visit to Madurai led Mahatma Gandhi to first adopt the loin cloth. He had seen farm laborers wearing it.
- RajkotMahatma Gandhi went to school in Rajkot, and his old school is now a museum. His childhood home stands nearby.
- AgraAgra's Taj Mahal marble is turning yellow and green. Pollution from the Yamuna river and city air is corroding it.
- KozhikodeOn the 20th of May 1498, Vasco da Gama stepped ashore at Kozhikode, India.
- AhmedabadIn 1411, Sultan Ahmad Shah put a stake in the ground at Manek Burj to found the city of Ahmedabad.
- PuneModern badminton got its first written rules in Pune in 1873. The game was once called Poona.
- DelhiDelhi's name has three competing origin stories. One says a king named Dhillu built the city in 50 BCE.
- KolkataKolkata, known as Calcutta until its official name changed in 2001, is a city whose founder a court refused to name. In 2003, answering a public petition, the Calcutta High Court ruled that the city does not have a founder at all. That is…
- MumbaiMumbai was once seven separate islands of Koli fishermen. English engineers later merged them into one peninsula.
- AurangabadIn 1681, Emperor Aurangzeb moved his whole court from Delhi to Aurangabad. He wanted to direct his Deccan campaigns.
- HyderabadHyderabad began as an answer to a water problem. In 1591 the Qutb Shahi ruler Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah founded a new city on the banks of the Musi River, because the fortress capital of Golconda kept running short of water. Today Hyderabad…
- VaranasiVaranasi, known for centuries as Benares and Kashi, struck the writer Mark Twain as a place older than time itself. In 1897 he wrote: "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as…