Hampi, India

Investing in local opportunities and pioneering public-private partnerships to lift a vast ancient metropolis off the World Heritage in Danger list

Temples, shrines, memorials, forts, and palaces are among the thousand plus architectural remains dating from the 14th to 16th centuries scattered over ten square miles of Hampi, a historic city on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the south Indian state of Karnataka.

According to chronicles of 15th century Persian and European traders, Hampi was a sophisticated and prosperous metropolis where spectacularly rich princes bankrolled massive Dravidian temples intricately carved with scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics. Among the most exquisite, Vitthala Temple features ‘musical pillars’ known to reverberate when tapped. The final capital, the last great Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagara, Hampi now offers a rare accumulation of intact sacred, royal, civil and military structures in their original setting.

Though conservation of historic Hampi dates to the end of the 19th century, much of that work was piece-meal, amateur and ultimately unsuccessful. Following Hampi’s inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986, research revealed a much larger area endowed with archaeological sites including extensive walled settlements, religious structures, forts, tanks, canals, fields, trade routes, civic buildings and industrial complexes.

However, unplanned development, inadequate protection and seasonal flooding threatened even the monuments within Hampi’s designated heritage area. Meanwhile many important monuments outside the narrowly defined protected zone were stripped for building materials to fuel the modern city’s construction boom.

After UNESCO added Hampi to the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1999, Global Heritage Fund joined in a pioneering public-private partnership with the Hampi Foundation and the Government of Karnataka. Our efforts began with a Master Conservation Plan for this spectacular landscape of vernacular buildings, sacred sites, monuments and ruins, as well as strategies to address local social and economic needs.

Aligned with the primary axis of Vithhala Temple along a popular pilgrimage route, the 15th century Chandramauleshwar Temple was the initial focus of our conservation work at Hampi, starting with stabilization of the foundations and conservation of its sacred chambers. Prior to GHF involvement, Chandramauleshwar Temple faced immediate threats including structural deterioration, environmental damage and prolonged misuse, as a storage facility and refuse dump.

We hired locals from the nearby community of Anegundi as stonemasons and craftspeople as well as boatmen to ferry people up and down the river on coracle boats. Religious pilgrims and sadhus living in an ashram on the Chandramauleshwar Temple site benefited from the restoration work as well, as resetting the temple steps allowed adherents to access the ashram more safely. In 2006 after much effort by Global Heritage Fund and our partners, Hampi was removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Some images courtesy of Sourav De and A. Elliot Olson

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