India 20120730 Madurai

Ïndia del sur, http://wikitravel.org/en/Madurai
recorregut urbà sortint del palau de Madurai

Madurai is the administrative headquarters of Madurai District in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the third largest city and the second largest municipal corporation in Tamil Nadu.[3][4] Located on the banks of River Vaigai, Madurai has been a major settlement for two millennia and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities[5] in the world. The capital of Pandyan dynasty was moved to Madurai from Korkai in 550 CE,[6] during the reign of Nedunj Cheliyan I.[7] Madurai is famous for its temples, the most prominent of which is Meenakshi Amman Temple, built by Pandyan and Madurai Nayak kings in the Dravidian style of architecture. It is also one of India's most noted Hindu pilgrimage centres.

The city is closely associted with Tamil language as all the 3 primary congregation of Tamil scholars, the Tamil Sangam (3rd century BC to 3rd century CE), were held at Madurai. Madurai's recorded history goes back to the 3rd century BC and the city is mentioned by Megasthenes (350 – 290 BC), the Greek ambassador to India and Kautilya (370–283 BC), the minister of the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya (born 340 BC, ruled 320 – 298 BC). The city was the principal administrative and cultural centre of the Pandyan dynasty which ruled over the southern parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala till the first half of the 14th century CE. In about 1311, the Pandyan dynasty was overthrown by the Delhi Sultanate which established the province of Ma'bar which later became independent as the Ma'bar Sultanate. When the Ma'bar Sultanate began to decline in the later years of the 14th century, Madurai was absorbed into the Vijayanagar Empire. The viceroys of the Vijayanagar Empire established the Madurai Nayak kingdom and ruled as independent kings from 1559 to 1736. After a brief period of occupation by Chanda Sahib and the Carnatic kingdom, Madurai was annexed by the British East India Company in 1801. Madurai became a municipality as a part of Independent India post 1947 and was constituted as a municipal corporation during 1971.