On 26 January 1565 the Vijayanagara army was destroyed at Talikota by an alliance of the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar and Bidar, and the regent Rama Raya was killed on the field. The capital, one of the largest cities in the world with several hundred thousand inhabitants, was looted and burned over months of systematic plunder and was never reoccupied at scale. Its royal centre, its sacred centre along the Tungabhadra, its colonnaded bazaar streets, tanks and aqueducts were left standing as ruins in the boulder landscape. The empire survived in reduced form from new capitals at Penukonda and later Chandragiri and Vellore.
The abandonment froze an entire South Asian imperial capital in the landscape, making Hampi the best-preserved evidence anywhere of how a Hindu royal city organised ritual topography, axial bazaar streets, water tanks and canals, and separated royal from sacred quarters. Its fall also redirected Deccan urban investment to sultanate capitals, feeding the growth of Bijapur, Golconda and the founding of Hyderabad in 1591.
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