The last great empire of medieval South India (c. 1336–1646), a vast and fabulously wealthy Hindu-ruled state that dominated the peninsula for over two centuries from its wonder-city on the Tungabhadra river. Grown rich on cotton, spices, diamonds, and imported war horses, it astonished foreign travelers before a coalition of Deccan sultanates broke it at the Battle of Talikota in 1565 and reduced its capital to the ruins now called Hampi.
In 1565, on a plain north of the Tungabhadra river, the army of South India's richest empire met a coalition of Deccan sultanates and was destroyed in a single day. The Battle of Talikota broke the dominance of a state that had ruled the peninsula for over two centuries. The victors poured into the capital, Vijayanagara, a city Persian and Portuguese visitors had ranked among the largest and wealthiest on earth, and spent months looting and burning it. Its people fled, and the city never recovered as an imperial capital. The temples, palaces, and great stone gateways were left to the sun. They still stand, broken, in the boulder fields of a place now called Hampi. The sack emptied a city that perhaps a quarter of a million people had once called home.