Bijapur, Karnataka

Accomodation
Hotel Mayura Adhil Shahi Annexe, Hotel Samrat, Hotel Sanman, Hotel Santosh.

How to reach there
Road: Buses are available for Bangalore, Belgaum, Hospet, Hyderabad, Kolhapur,Pune and Sholapur.

Rail: Trains are available for Hubli, Bangalore, Sholapur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Pune and Bombay.

What to see
Golgumbaz: The largest and most famous monument is the Golgumbaz. Built in 1659, it is a simple building with four walls that enclose a majestic hall 1704 sq meters in area, buttressed by octagonal seven-storey towers at each of the corners. This basic structure is capped by an enormous dome said to be the world's second largest after St Peter's Vatican City, Rome. The diameter of Golgumbaz is 38 meters.

Ibrahim Roza: The beautiful Ibrahim Roza was constructed at the height of Bijapur's prosperity by Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1580-1626) for his queen. Its 24-meter-high minarets . Buried here are Ibrahim Adil Shah, his queen, Taj Sultana, his daughter, two sons, and his mother Haji Badi Sahiba.

Jame-e-Masjid: This is another finely proportioned building with graceful arches, a fine dome and a large inner courtyard containing fountains and a reservoir. It’s quite a large monument covering an area of 10,800 sq meters and has room for 2250 worshippers. Space for them are marked out in black on the polished floor of the mosque.

Asar Mahal: To the east of the citadel, the Asar Mahal was built by Mohammed Adil Shah in about 1646 to serve as a Hall of Justice. The rooms on the upper storey are profusely decorated with frescoes, many of them using foliage and flower motifs, some portraying male and female figures in various poses. The front of the building is graced with a square tank still fed by conduits from Begum Tank. Women are not allowed inside the main structure.

Citadel:This monument was built by Ali Adil Shah I around 1561 to serve the dual purpose of a royal residence and a Durbar Hall. Essentially it's an enormous hall completely open to the north, so that an audience outside the hall had a full and unobstructed view of the proceedings on the raised platform inside. The hall was flanked by small chambers used to house the families of the royal household.It isSurrounded by its own fortified walls and wide moat in the city centre, it once contained the palaces, pleasure gardens, and Durbar Hall of the Adil Shahi kings.

Malik-e-Maidan: The name of the cannon, Malik-e-Maidan, means Monarch of the Plains. It measures over four meters long and almost one half meters in diameter, and is estimated to weigh 55 tonnes! It was cast in 1549 by Mahammed-bin-Hasan Rumi, a Turkish officer in the service of the King of Ahmednagar. It was brought to Bijapur as a war trophy and set up here with the might of 10 elephants, 400 oxen and hundreds of men. Its outer surface is polished dark green and adorned with inscriptions in Persian and Arabic. One of them attributed to the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, says that he subdued this gun.