Kote Venkataramana Temple

Kote Venkataramana Temple stands on Krishna Rajendra Road in the Kote area of Bengaluru's Old City, Karnataka, India, within the former fort precinct. It is a 17th-century Dravidian temple built by Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar of Mysore, who held Bengaluru in the late 1600s after acquiring it from the Marathas, and it records the Wodeyar dynasty's patronage of the old Pete. The temple is dedicated to Venkataramana, a form of Vishnu, and follows a plan typical of Vijayanagara-influenced southern temples: an entrance porch, a pillared mandapa, an antechamber and an inner sanctum. Its carved granite pillars are the main feature of the interior, and the mandapa shows the Vijayanagara-style pillar sculpture that Mysore rulers continued to use after the empire's decline. The building sits a short distance from Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, and the two together give a sense of how the fort area changed hands from the Wodeyars to Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan and then to the British. Tradition holds that the temple served as a place of worship for the royal household, and its position in the fort suggests a role in the political landscape of the town. The temple is not a museum and has no curatorial displays; it remains in regular worship and is looked after by its trustees and religious authorities. Structural repairs and repainting over the decades have preserved the stone pillars and sanctum, while the setting is now a busy urban district close to KR Market. Visitors should dress modestly, remove footwear and visit outside the midday break. It rewards a short stop in combination with the Summer Palace and the Delhi Gate.