Secular Architectural Landscape of Vijayanagara Period

Prominent types of architecture are visible around us: religious, civil and defense. These cannot be defined in a rigid manner as such their nomenclature indicates. Most of the fundamentals of building material and purposeful features are same. Merely the functional utilities of the buildings diverge in their utilization and purpose. This book deals with the study of buildings and structures of Historical site of Vijayanagara Empire of 13th -15th centuries, which can be, categorized as secular on the basis of their functional utility. The site at Vijayanagara city provided ample raw material for building, and the huge massifs of rock were often themselves sculpted to produce a unique architecture that is part organic, part man-made and often is difficult to distinguish from natural features. The work is based on analysis of physical remains and corroborating the information from epigraphical and foreign and vernacular literary sources. The book contains six chapters dealing with various segments of architectural landscape of the Vijayanagara site.…