Talikota and the End of Vijayanagara

January 23, 1565

A coalition of Deccan sultanates routed the Hindu empire of Vijayanagara at Talikota in a single bloody afternoon. The capital city of Hampi, one of the richest in Asia, was sacked and burned for six months. Hindu temple culture in southern India never recovered its medieval grandeur. Hampi's ruins lay forgotten until nineteenth-century archaeologists rediscovered them beneath the jungle.