Current Time in Bijapur, India

Bijapur, officially renamed Vijayapura in 2014, is a historic city in the northern part of the state of Karnataka in southern India. It stands on the dry Deccan plateau at an altitude of around six hundred metres, in a landscape of black cotton soil, scattered rocky outcrops and wide horizons. The climate is hot and semi arid, with a short monsoon between June and September, and the city has always depended on ingenious systems of wells, tanks and stone aqueducts for its water.

The urban area is home to roughly a third of a million people and serves as the administrative centre of a large district. It is a busy regional market for grain, pulses, cotton, sugarcane and grapes, and northern Karnataka has become one of India's leading wine producing zones. Above all, though, Bijapur is known across the subcontinent for its extraordinary concentration of Islamic architecture.

The city rose to prominence under the Adil Shahi dynasty, which ruled an independent sultanate here from 1490 until 1686. During those two centuries it became one of the wealthiest and most cultured capitals in India, a centre of Persian and Deccani painting, music and poetry, defended by a circuit of walls more than ten kilometres long studded with bastions and gateways. The sultanate finally fell to the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, after which the city declined, passing later to the Marathas, to the Nizam of Hyderabad and eventually to British administration.

Its greatest monument is the Gol Gumbaz, the mausoleum of Sultan Mohammed Adil Shah, crowned by one of the largest masonry domes in the world. A gallery runs around the base of the dome where the faintest whisper carries clearly across the vast interior, and the corner towers give sweeping views over the city. Equally admired is the Ibrahim Rauza, a tomb and mosque of great refinement whose carved stone screens and slender minarets are said to have influenced later Mughal builders. The Jumma Masjid, the unfinished Bara Kaman, the palace ruins of Gagan Mahal, the huge bronze cannon known as Malik e Maidan and stepped water tanks such as Taj Bawdi complete a remarkable heritage.

Cultural life reflects a long history of shared traditions, with Hindu temple festivals, Sufi shrines and annual urs celebrations, along with a distinctive local cuisine built on sorghum flatbread, fiery chutney powders and rich mutton dishes. Local museums display sculpture, weapons, manuscripts and coins from the sultanate period, and craftsmen still work in metal and textiles in the old quarters.

Bijapur is connected by rail and by state highways to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai, and buses link it with the surrounding countryside. It hosts a state women's university, a medical college and several other institutions that draw students from across the region.

For anyone interested in the history of the Deccan, Bijapur is essential, a working Indian city that still lives among the domes and gateways of a vanished court.