LIST OF BLUE PLAQUES

Heritage Sites of

ANANTHAPURAMU DISTRICT & TOWN

Andhra Pradesh, India

A Compendium of 35 Historic Monuments and Landmarks

Compiled from official district heritage records, historical accounts, and published sources

Introduction

Ananthapuramu (Anantapur) district, in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, carries a history that stretches from its Vijayanagara-era origins in the fourteenth century, through its transformation into the headquarters of the Ceded Districts under Sir Thomas Munro at the turn of the nineteenth century, to its role today as a modern district administrative and educational centre. The district’s blue plaque initiative recognises thirty-five heritage sites across Ananthapuramu town and its surrounding areas — spanning ancient temples, colonial-era civic buildings, freedom-movement memorials, educational institutions, and the historic tanks and watercourses that gave the town its very name.

This compendium presents each of the thirty-five listed sites on its own page, drawing on official district records, published historical accounts, and institutional histories to describe the significance, background, and character of each monument. Where the documented history of a particular site is limited, the entry describes the site within the broader historical and architectural context of the district, while noting where further research or documentation remains pending.

Each entry records the site’s official plaque status — “Completed” for those where a blue plaque has already been fixed, and “Pending” for those awaiting installation — as recorded in the district’s official list of heritage sites.

SITE No. 01

Sir Thomas Munro Memorial

Location: Adimurthy Nagar, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

This site commemorates Major General Sir Thomas Munro (1761–1827), the Scottish soldier and administrator who served as the first Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts, with his headquarters at Anantapur, between 1800 and 1807. Munro later rose to become Governor of the Madras Presidency, a post he held until his death from cholera in 1827.

During his tenure at Anantapur, Munro is credited with suppressing the eighty turbulent local chieftains known as the palegars and restoring civil order across the region now called Rayalaseema. He is best remembered as the architect of the ryotwari system of land revenue, under which tax was collected directly from the cultivator (the ryot) rather than through intermediary zamindars — a reform that was regarded as farmer-friendly for its time and that shaped land administration across South India for over a century.

Munro’s memory remains unusually alive in local culture. Even generations after his death, families in the district have continued to name sons Munrolappa or Munrolayya in his honour, and folk ballads referring to him were still sung well into the twentieth century. He is popularly remembered for scrapping a number of oppressive local taxes and for commissioning irrigation tanks across the drought-prone district.

The Anantapur site keeps this civic memory alive in the town he administered, complementing the larger equestrian statue of Munro that stands in Chennai. Local commemorations of his birth anniversary continue to be held by district officials and citizens’ groups, reflecting the enduring, almost legendary status accorded to the district’s first Collector.

SITE No. 02

Town Congregational Church

Location: Saptagiri Circle, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Town Congregational Church at Saptagiri Circle is one of Anantapur’s older Protestant Christian places of worship, reflecting the wave of nineteenth-century Christian missionary activity that spread across the Ceded Districts and the wider Bellary–Anantapur region under British administration.

Congregational churches of this kind in the Rayalaseema belt typically trace their establishment to missionary societies that were active in South India through the 1800s, working alongside the colonial administration to set up churches, schools, and reading rooms in district towns. The Anantapur congregation grew out of this broader missionary effort to serve both European residents and a growing local Christian community.

Architecturally, such congregational churches in the region were generally built in a simple colonial ecclesiastical style — plain rectangular halls with pitched roofs, modest bell towers, and pointed-arch windows — designed for functional worship rather than ornamentation, in contrast to the more elaborate Anglican or Catholic churches built in the larger Presidency towns.

The church continues to serve as an active place of worship for Anantapur’s Christian community and stands today as one of the town’s markers of its layered religious history, alongside its older Hindu temples and later mosques. Its listing among the town’s protected heritage structures acknowledges its role in the social and architectural history of colonial-era Anantapur.

SITE No. 03

Collector Camp Office

Location: Government Hospital Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Collector Camp Office on Government Hospital Road was historically used as a touring or camp office for the District Collector — a facility that allowed the district’s chief administrative officer to conduct official business, hold public hearings, and meet citizens while away from the main Collectorate.

Camp offices of this kind were a standard feature of British Indian district administration. Collectors were expected to tour extensively through their jurisdiction, inspecting revenue records, settling land disputes, and reviewing local public works, and camp offices provided a fixed point of administrative continuity in the district headquarters town even as the Collector’s personal touring camp moved through outlying taluks.

Given Anantapur’s role as the headquarters of the erstwhile Ceded Districts (later Datta Mandalam) from as early as 1799, and its continuing status as district headquarters after the formal creation of Anantapur district in 1882, the town accumulated a number of such administrative buildings through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of which this camp office is one surviving example.

Today the building stands as a reminder of the layered administrative history of Anantapur town, from its early colonial role as Thomas Munro’s headquarters through to its continuing function as the seat of district government in independent India.

SITE No. 04

Government Industrial Training Institute

Location: Court Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Government Industrial Training Institute (ITI) on Court Road is one of Anantapur’s older technical education institutions, part of a network of ITIs established across Andhra Pradesh to provide vocational and craft-based training to school leavers and to feed skilled tradespeople into local industry and public works.

Institutions of this type typically trained students in trades such as fitting, turning, electrical wiring, carpentry, and motor mechanics, and served an important role in a district like Anantapur where agriculture and small-scale industry — including groundnut processing, textiles, and later engineering trades connected to institutions such as the nearby JNTU College of Engineering — created steady demand for trained artisans and technicians.

The building itself, located on Court Road in the administrative heart of the town near the district’s other government institutions, reflects the mid-twentieth-century expansion of technical and vocational education infrastructure across India as the state sought to build a skilled industrial workforce in the decades following independence.

The institute continues to train students in various trades today, and its long-standing presence on Court Road has made it a familiar landmark in Anantapur’s civic and educational landscape.

SITE No. 05

Peace Memorial Hall

Location: Court Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Peace Memorial Hall stands on a raised site opposite the District Court complex in the Newtown area of Anantapur, occupying nearly two acres of ground. It was built by the Indian engineer Sri V. S. S. S. Raghavan during the closing years of British rule, with its foundation stone laid on 13 December 1919 by the Honourable C. C. Todunder, ICS, a senior member of the Fort St George Council in Madras.

The hall’s construction was funded through a public subscription raised by the town’s leading citizens, including the British administration, to commemorate the end of the First World War (1914–1918) — hence its name. It took roughly two years to complete, and the finished building was formally inaugurated on 7 November 1921 by the Honourable Khan Bahadur Muhammad Habibullah Sahib Bahadur.

Since its inauguration, the Peace Memorial Hall has served the town primarily as a venue for community programmes and as a public reading hall, functions it has continued to perform for over a century. Its scale and prominent siting opposite the District Court building made it, from the outset, one of Anantapur’s principal civic gathering spaces.

As one of the town’s few purpose-built war memorial halls from the First World War era, the building is an important surviving link to Anantapur’s experience of that global conflict and to the civic culture of the late colonial period, when public subscription and community initiative combined to create shared civic institutions.

SITE No. 06

District Court Building

Location: Court Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The District Court Building on Court Road — the very road that takes its name from this complex — has served as the seat of judicial administration for Anantapur district since the colonial period, when the Ceded Districts’ judiciary was organised under the Madras Presidency’s court system.

As Anantapur grew into an important administrative centre following Thomas Munro’s tenure as Principal Collector and the subsequent formal creation of Anantapur district in 1882, a permanent District Court became necessary to handle the growing volume of civil and criminal litigation across the district’s many taluks, in a region historically marked by land disputes connected to the old palegar estates.

The court building’s architecture is typical of colonial-era judicial structures in South Indian district towns: solid masonry construction, deep verandahs to cope with the district’s hot, dry climate, and a formal, symmetrical facade intended to convey the gravity of the institution it housed. Its proximity to the Peace Memorial Hall and other civic buildings placed it at the centre of Anantapur’s colonial-era administrative quarter.

The District Court continues to function today as a key institution of the local judiciary, and the historic building remains an active part of Anantapur’s civic infrastructure even as court operations have expanded into newer annexes over the decades.

SITE No. 07

Ananthapuramu Police Training College

Location: Near Tower Clock Flyover, Lakshmi Nagar, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Police Training College near the Tower Clock flyover in Lakshmi Nagar is one of the institutions responsible for training police recruits and officers serving Anantapur district and the wider Rayalaseema region, reflecting the district’s long-standing role as a centre of law-and-order administration dating back to the suppression of the palegar chieftains under Thomas Munro in the early 1800s.

Police training establishments of this kind in Andhra Pradesh typically combine classroom instruction in law, procedure, and investigation with physical and drill training, preparing recruits for postings across the state’s police stations, and periodically hosting refresher courses for serving constabulary and sub-inspectors.

Its location near the historic Tower Clock — itself a landmark built to commemorate India’s freedom struggle — situates the training college within Anantapur’s cluster of institutional buildings in the town’s older core, alongside the prison, the Government Arts College, and other public institutions established or expanded through the twentieth century.

The college remains an active training facility today, continuing Anantapur’s long association with policing and district administration that began with Munro’s original charge to establish order across the Ceded Districts more than two centuries ago.

SITE No. 08

Prison

Location: Near N.G.O Home, Tower Clock, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The district prison near the Tower Clock in Anantapur is among the town’s older custodial institutions, situated within the historic administrative cluster that grew up around the town centre following the establishment of Anantapur as headquarters of the Ceded Districts under Thomas Munro at the turn of the nineteenth century.

District jails of this era in the Madras Presidency were typically built to a standard colonial design — high perimeter walls, watchtowers, and radiating cell blocks — intended to hold under-trial prisoners as well as those convicted by the District Court located nearby, reflecting the close functional relationship between the judiciary and custodial administration in a district headquarters town.

Anantapur’s prison would have held particular significance during the Indian freedom struggle, when district jails across the Madras Presidency routinely held political prisoners detained during the Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, and Quit India movements of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s — a history commemorated more directly nearby by the Tower Clock, which was built specifically in memory of freedom-movement martyrs.

The prison continues to function as part of the state’s correctional infrastructure, and its long tenure at this central location makes it one of the enduring institutional landmarks of old Anantapur town.

SITE No. 09

Tower Clock

Location: Beside Lepakshi Handicrafts Emporium, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Tower Clock is arguably Anantapur’s most recognisable landmark, standing in the very heart of the town beside the Lepakshi Handicrafts Emporium. It was built specifically in memory of the martyrs of the Indian independence movement, at the initiative of M. Ramachandra Naidu, then the district judge, along with other local leaders, in 1945 — just two years before Independence.

The structure is rich in symbolic design. Its radius of fifteen feet is said to represent the fifteenth date, while its eight faces stand for the eighth month — together encoding 15 August. Its height of forty-seven feet completes the reference, standing for the year 1947, the year of India’s independence. The clock tower was thus conceived, even before Independence was achieved, as a monument anticipating and honouring the freedom that was to come.

Because of its central location and instantly recognisable silhouette, the Tower Clock has become synonymous with Anantapur itself, functioning as the town’s principal orientation point — nearby institutions, including the Government Arts College, the prison, and the Police Training College, are commonly described in relation to it.

More than seventy-five years after its construction, the Tower Clock remains a working timepiece and a cherished civic monument, embodying both the sacrifice of the freedom movement and the aspirations of a generation that built it in anticipation of independence.

SITE No. 10

Government Arts College

Location: Near Tower Clock, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Government Arts College, Anantapur — affectionately known across the region as “the Grand Old Lady of Rayalaseema” — was established by the British on 8 July 1916 as the Ceded Districts College, a second-grade college founded to bring advanced education to the people of the Ceded Districts, which at the time also encompassed present-day Bellary district in Karnataka.

The college was started by Sri S. E. Ranganathan with an initial intake of just forty students. It was granted first-grade college status on 6 June 1918, an occasion inaugurated by Lord Pentland, and hostel facilities followed in 1917. The institution was renamed Government Arts College in 1947, the year of India’s independence, and today functions as an autonomous, NAAC ‘A’-grade institution affiliated with Sri Krishnadevaraya University.

Among its most illustrious former faculty members was Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who lectured here before going on to become President of India — a distinction the college takes particular pride in. Over more than a century of continuous operation, it has grown to become the largest college in the four districts of Rayalaseema and one of the largest government colleges in the state by student intake.

Located immediately beside the iconic Tower Clock, the college’s campus is inseparable from the visual identity of Anantapur town. Having completed over a century of service to education in one of India’s more educationally disadvantaged regions at the time of its founding, it remains one of the district’s most storied institutions and a proud symbol of the town’s civic and academic heritage.

SITE No. 11

Railway Station

Location: Arts College Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Pending

Anantapur Railway Station, situated on Arts College Road, has served as the town’s principal rail link since the extension of railway lines through the Ceded Districts in the late nineteenth century, connecting Anantapur to the wider network built by British-era railway companies operating in the Madras Presidency.

The station lies on what became a key section of line linking the Rayalaseema region toward Guntakal — one of the major railway junctions of South India — and onward toward both Madras (Chennai) and Bombay (Mumbai), giving landlocked Anantapur an important commercial and administrative connection to the coast and to other Presidency towns.

As with many district-headquarters stations of the period, the original station buildings would have combined utilitarian colonial railway architecture — sloped tiled roofs, deep platform awnings, and solid masonry offices — designed to withstand the district’s hot, dry climate while serving the steadily growing passenger and freight traffic generated by the region’s groundnut, cotton, and other agricultural trade.

The station remains a functioning and important stop on the network today, and its blue-plaque status, though still marked as pending fixation, reflects a recognition of its long-standing role in integrating Anantapur into India’s rail network since the colonial era.

SITE No. 12

C.S.I Holy Trinity Church

Location: Aravind Nagar, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The C.S.I. Holy Trinity Church in Aravind Nagar belongs to the Church of South India, the united Protestant denomination formed in 1947 through the merger of Anglican, Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches across South India. Its congregation in Anantapur traces its roots to the Anglican missionary and chaplaincy work established in the district during the British period.

Churches of the Holy Trinity dedication built during the colonial era in district towns like Anantapur typically served both the small resident European and Anglo-Indian community — including administrators, railway staff, and army personnel — and a growing local Christian congregation built up through mission schools and hospitals established alongside such churches.

Following the formation of the CSI in 1947, many former Anglican parishes across South India, including this one, were absorbed into the new united church, a transition that reflected the broader post-independence reorganisation of Christian institutions in India along ecumenical rather than denominational lines.

Today the church continues to serve Anantapur’s Christian community from its location in Aravind Nagar, standing alongside the Town Congregational Church as one of the two principal historic Protestant places of worship recognised in the town’s heritage listing.

SITE No. 13

Jamia Mosque, Hussain Peera

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Jamia Mosque at Hussain Peera stands in the Old Town area of Anantapur, in one of the town’s older Muslim quarters. The locality’s name, incorporating “Peera” (from pir, a Muslim saint or holy man), points to Anantapur’s history as a settlement with an established Muslim community predating and continuing through the British administrative period.

As the principal Jamia — or congregational — mosque of the locality, the building would traditionally have served as the main venue for Friday (Jumu’ah) prayers for the surrounding Muslim community, distinguishing it from smaller neighbourhood mosques used for daily prayers. Its presence in the Old Town, alongside long-established Hindu temples such as the Virupaksheswara Swamy and Sri Chennakesava Swamy temples, reflects the layered, multi-religious character of Anantapur’s historic core.

Mosque architecture of this vintage in the Deccan and Rayalaseema region typically features a rectangular prayer hall oriented toward Mecca, a raised mihrab, and often a modest minaret or dome, built in local stone and lime mortar suited to the district’s arid climate.

The Jamia Mosque remains an active place of worship today and continues to anchor community life in the Hussain Peera locality, representing an important strand of Anantapur’s religious and social heritage.

SITE No. 14

Virupaksheswara Swamy Temple

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Virupaksheswara Swamy Temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva in his Virupaksha form, stands in the Old Town area of Anantapur. The Virupaksha dedication is closely associated with the great Vijayanagara Empire, whose most famous temple of this name stands at the imperial capital of Hampi — a connection that situates this Anantapur shrine within the broader Vijayanagara-era temple-building tradition that shaped Rayalaseema’s sacred landscape.

Anantapur district itself has strong Vijayanagara-era roots: the villages of Anantasagaram and Bukkarayasamudram, from which the town takes its name, were founded by Anantarasa Chikkavodeya, a minister of the Vijayanagara ruler Bukka Raya I, in the fourteenth century. Temples dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu in the Old Town, including this one, are part of the same layer of religious architecture associated with that dynasty’s patronage.

Typical of Vijayanagara and post-Vijayanagara temple construction in the region, such shrines feature a sanctum (garbhagriha) housing the primary deity, a pillared mandapa for congregation, and often a gopuram or tower gateway, all built from locally quarried granite finished with lime plaster.

The temple continues to serve as an active place of Hindu worship in Anantapur’s Old Town and stands as one of the town’s oldest surviving religious structures, testifying to the deep pre-colonial roots of the settlement that would later become the headquarters of the Ceded Districts.

SITE No. 15

First Collector Office

Location: DRDA Building, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The building now used as the DRDA (District Rural Development Agency) office is identified as the site of the first Collector’s office in Anantapur, dating to the very beginning of the town’s role as an administrative headquarters under Sir Thomas Munro, who was appointed Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts in 1800 with his seat at Anantapur.

From this office, Munro directly administered the taluks that today form Anantapur district, while the remaining territory of the newly ceded region was managed by sub-Collectors reporting to him. It was from an office of this kind that Munro’s signature reforms — the suppression of the palegar chieftains and the introduction of the ryotwari land-revenue system — would have been planned and administered in the district’s earliest years under British rule.

Following Munro’s departure in 1807, the Ceded Districts were reorganised, eventually leading to the formal creation of Anantapur district in 1882 after its separation from Bellary district. Through these successive reorganisations, the site continued to anchor the district’s civil administration before newer Collectorate buildings were constructed to meet the needs of a growing government establishment.

Its subsequent repurposing to house the DRDA reflects a common pattern in Indian district towns, where the oldest colonial administrative buildings are adapted to newer developmental and welfare functions even as they retain their historical significance as the birthplace of the district’s civil administration.

SITE No. 16

Sri Chennakesava Swamy Temple

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Sri Chennakesava Swamy Temple, dedicated to a form of Lord Vishnu, stands in Anantapur’s Old Town and is counted among the town’s most significant Vaishnavite shrines, complementing the nearby Shaivite Virupaksheswara Swamy Temple in reflecting the dual Shiva–Vishnu temple traditions typical of Vijayanagara-influenced towns across Rayalaseema.

Temples dedicated to Chennakesava (literally “beautiful Kesava,” a name of Vishnu) are found across the wider Vijayanagara cultural sphere, with the most celebrated example at Belur in Karnataka. Anantapur’s own Chennakesava Swamy Temple reflects the spread of this devotional tradition into the region during and after Vijayanagara rule, when the district’s founding villages of Anantasagaram and Bukkarayasamudram were established by the empire’s ministers.

The temple’s architecture follows the conventions of South Indian Vaishnavite temple design, with a sanctum housing the deity, subsidiary shrines, and a pillared mandapa used for daily rituals and festival congregations, constructed from locally sourced granite in keeping with the building traditions of the dry Rayalaseema plateau.

As one of the principal Vishnu temples in the Old Town, it continues to be an active centre of worship and festival observance, and its inclusion among the town’s protected heritage sites recognises its role in the long religious history of Anantapur predating British administration.

SITE No. 17

Victoria Memorial Hospital

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Victoria Memorial Hospital in Anantapur’s Old Town belongs to a well-known category of public healthcare institutions built across British India in the years following Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, when district towns across the subcontinent raised memorial hospitals, halls, and dispensaries in her name as expressions of loyalty to the Crown and as practical civic improvements.

Such Victoria Memorial hospitals typically extended Western medical care — including maternity and dispensary services — to district populations that had previously relied largely on traditional systems of medicine, and were often funded through a combination of government grants and public subscription from local elites, mirroring the funding model later used for Anantapur’s own Peace Memorial Hall.

Sited within the Old Town rather than the newer civil lines area, the hospital would have served the town’s established residential core directly, complementing the government hospital facilities that gave nearby Government Hospital Road its name.

The hospital’s continuing presence in Anantapur’s Old Town reflects more than a century of public healthcare provision in the district and stands as a marker of the town’s early twentieth-century civic development, alongside other Victoria-era commemorative institutions built across British India.

SITE No. 18

Town Hall

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Pending

The Town Hall in Anantapur’s Old Town has traditionally served as the venue for civic functions, public meetings, and community gatherings, occupying a role common to town halls built across British India’s district headquarters from the late nineteenth century onward, when local boards and municipalities were granted greater administrative responsibility under colonial reforms.

Town halls of this era typically combined a large assembly space with subsidiary offices for the local municipal or town board, and were often built with public or municipal funds as symbols of the town’s growing civic self-governance — a role Anantapur’s Town Hall would have played as the town developed following the creation of Anantapur district in 1882.

Positioned within the Old Town rather than the newer administrative quarter around Court Road, the Town Hall reflects the layered growth of Anantapur, in which the historic core retained its own civic institutions even as the British-era administrative complex developed nearby.

Its blue-plaque status remains marked as pending fixation, but the building’s long-standing function as a gathering place for the town’s public life continues to be recognised as part of Anantapur’s civic heritage.

SITE No. 19

Basavanna Katta

Location: Tadipatri Road, Cheruvu Katta, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Basavanna Katta is a shrine dedicated to Basavanna, the sacred bull and vahana (mount) of Lord Shiva, situated along Tadipatri Road at Cheruvu Katta — literally the “tank bund” locality — on the edge of one of Anantapur’s traditional water bodies.

Shrines of this kind, built at the bunds of village and town tanks, are a common feature of the Rayalaseema landscape, where the Nandi or Basavanna image was traditionally installed to watch over the tank and the agricultural land it irrigated, reflecting the deep connection between Hindu ritual life and water management in this drought-prone region.

Cheruvu Katta’s cluster of shrines and folk monuments — including Basavanna Katta itself, the nearby Musalamma Katta, and the Kashi Visweswara Swamy Temple — together form a small sacred precinct associated with the tank, illustrating how communities historically sanctified the infrastructure on which their agrarian livelihoods depended.

The shrine remains a focus of local devotion today, particularly among farming communities for whom the tank and its associated deities continue to hold practical as well as religious significance.

SITE No. 20

Musalamma Katta

Location: Cheruvu Katta, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Musalamma Katta takes its name from a poignant piece of local folklore associated with the great Anantasagaram tank, from which Anantapur town itself derives its name. According to tradition recorded in official district accounts, a woman named Musalamma sacrificed herself to seal a breach in the tank’s bund, saving the surrounding settlement from flooding.

In commemoration of her sacrifice, the section of the tank bund where the event is said to have occurred was named Musalammakatta in her honour — a naming tradition that reflects a wider pattern across South India of tank bunds and irrigation works being named after local figures, often women, associated with their construction or protection.

The story situates Musalamma Katta within the same sacred landscape as the neighbouring Basavanna Katta and Kashi Visweswara Swamy Temple at Cheruvu Katta, all clustered around the historic Anantasagaram tank whose scale — described as one of the largest reservoirs in the district — made it central to both the agricultural economy and the identity of the town that grew up beside it.

Musalamma Katta continues to be recognised locally as a site of both historical memory and popular devotion, commemorating an act of self-sacrifice tied to the very tank that gave Anantapur its name.

SITE No. 21

Kashi Visweswara Swamy Temple

Location: Tadipatri Road, Cheruvu Katta, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Kashi Visweswara Swamy Temple at Cheruvu Katta is dedicated to Lord Shiva in the form of Visweswara (Vishwanath), the presiding deity of Varanasi (Kashi) — one of Hinduism’s holiest cities. Temples bearing this dedication elsewhere in India are typically established to allow devotees symbolic access to the sanctity of Kashi without undertaking the long pilgrimage north, a devotional practice common across South Indian temple towns.

Situated on Tadipatri Road at the bund of the historic tank locality of Cheruvu Katta, the temple forms part of the same sacred tank-side precinct as the neighbouring Basavanna Katta and Musalamma Katta, reflecting the close integration of religious observance with the district’s vital irrigation infrastructure in a region where water has always been scarce.

Architecturally, the temple follows conventional Shaivite temple design for the region, with a sanctum housing a Shiva linga, a mandapa for worship, and subsidiary shrines, built from local granite suited to the dry Rayalaseema climate.

The temple remains an active centre of worship, drawing devotees from the surrounding Cheruvu Katta locality and beyond, and stands as part of a small but historically rich cluster of religious sites gathered around one of Anantapur’s oldest water bodies.

SITE No. 22

Devarakonda

Location: Bukkarayasamudram, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Devarakonda, located within Bukkarayasamudram on the outskirts of Anantapur, sits in a locality with deep Vijayanagara-era roots. Bukkarayasamudram itself was founded, alongside the neighbouring village of Anantasagaram, by Anantarasa Chikkavodeya, the minister of the Vijayanagara ruler Bukka Raya I, in the fourteenth century — indeed, the very name Bukkarayasamudram (“the tank of Bukka Raya”) commemorates this royal association.

The name Devarakonda — literally “hill of the deity” — is characteristic of the many hillock shrines found across the Rayalaseema plateau, where rocky outcrops rising from the plains were frequently sanctified with temples or shrines, often affording commanding views over the surrounding tanks and agricultural land.

Given Bukkarayasamudram’s foundational role in the naming of Anantapur (Ananthasagaram being the tank from which the town’s own name, meaning “endless ocean,” is derived), Devarakonda’s location within this locality situates it within the very landscape from which Anantapur town itself grew, making it one of the more historically resonant sites in the district’s heritage listing.

The site continues to be recognised locally as part of the sacred and historical geography of Bukkarayasamudram, an area whose Vijayanagara-era foundation predates the town of Anantapur that eventually grew up around its tank.

SITE No. 23

Ananthapuramu Sagaram Tank

Location: Opposite District Collectorate Office, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Ananthapuramu Sagaram — also recorded historically as Anantasagaram — is the great tank from which Anantapur town takes its very name, Ananthapuramu translating roughly as “endless ocean,” a reference to the tank’s considerable scale. The tank and the neighbouring village of Bukkarayasamudram were established by Anantarasa Chikkavodeya, minister to the Vijayanagara ruler Bukka Raya I, in the fourteenth century, though historians differ on whether the tank was named for Anantarasa himself or for a queen named Anantamma.

Occupying an area of over ten million square metres, Anantasagaram has long been counted among the largest reservoirs in the district, historically serving as the primary source of irrigation and, in earlier times, drinking water for the settlement that grew up around it. Its scale and centrality to the town’s founding are reflected in its location directly opposite the District Collectorate — the seat of the very administration Thomas Munro established when he made Anantapur his headquarters in 1800.

The tank is also linked to local legend through the story of Musalamma, who is said to have sacrificed herself to seal a breach in its bund, an act commemorated at the nearby Musalammakatta shrine — illustrating how thoroughly the tank’s history is woven into the town’s folklore as well as its practical history of water management.

As the literal namesake of the town and district, Ananthapuramu Sagaram Tank holds a foundational place among Anantapur’s heritage sites, connecting the town’s Vijayanagara-era origins to its present-day identity.

SITE No. 24

Oil Technological Research Institute

Location: Sangameswara Circle, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Oil Technological Research Institute (OTRI) at Sangameswara Circle was established in 1948, in the same post-war and post-independence period that saw the College of Engineering, Anantapur relocate to the town after starting at Guindy, Madras, in 1946. The institute was set up to research the processing and technology of edible and industrial oils — a field of direct relevance to Anantapur district, historically one of India’s leading groundnut (peanut)-growing regions.

Given that groundnut has long been the dominant crop of Anantapur’s semi-arid agricultural economy, an institute dedicated to oil technology research found a natural home in the district, supporting the value-addition and processing side of the local groundnut trade that has been central to the region’s economy for generations.

OTRI later became a constituent unit of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Anantapur (JNTUA) following the university’s establishment in 2008, joining the JNTUA College of Engineering as part of the university’s technical education network. In 2016, the institute was renamed the Oil Technology and Pharmaceutical Research Institute (OTPRI), reflecting an expansion of its research mandate to include pharmaceutical sciences alongside its original focus on oil technology.

The institute continues to operate as part of JNTUA today, maintaining a research tradition that dates back more than seventy-five years and that remains closely tied to the agricultural economy of the district it serves.

SITE No. 25

Collector Office Building

Location: Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Pending

The Collector Office Building — the present-day Collectorate — is the seat of Anantapur district’s chief administrative authority, a role that traces its lineage directly back to Sir Thomas Munro’s appointment as Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts in 1800, when Anantapur was chosen as his headquarters.

Following Munro’s departure in 1807, the Ceded Districts were divided into the Bellary and Cuddapah (YSR) Collectorates, before Anantapur district was formally carved out as a separate district in 1882 upon its bifurcation from Bellary. Since then, the Collectorate has functioned as the administrative nerve centre of the district, overseeing revenue collection, law and order, and — in the modern era — the coordination of development programmes across the district’s mandals.

The building’s location, opposite the historic Anantasagaram tank from which the town takes its name, situates the modern seat of district government directly beside the very landmark around which Anantapur originally grew, linking the district’s contemporary administration to its Vijayanagara-era origins.

As the working seat of the current District Collector, the building remains very much a living institution rather than a purely historical monument, and its blue-plaque status is recorded as pending fixation even as it continues to anchor the district’s governance today.

SITE No. 26

Munro Kacheri

Location: Ananthapuramu to Bangalore Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Munro Kacheri — “kacheri” being the Hindustani and Telugu term for a government office or court — refers to the office building associated with Sir Thomas Munro’s tenure as Principal Collector of the Ceded Districts at Anantapur between 1800 and 1807, situated along the historic road linking the town to Bangalore.

From a kacheri of this kind, Munro would have conducted the routine business of district administration: hearing revenue disputes, issuing orders relating to the suppression of the palegar chieftains, and overseeing the early implementation of the ryotwari land-revenue settlement that would become his most enduring administrative legacy across South India.

The building’s location on the road toward Bangalore reflects the strategic importance of this route in linking Anantapur — headquarters of the Ceded Districts and, before 1807, of a jurisdiction that also included the present-day Bellary district of Karnataka — to the wider network of British administrative and military centres in the region.

Munro Kacheri stands today as one of the more directly personal markers of Thomas Munro’s association with Anantapur, complementing the town’s other Munro-related sites — his memorial at Adimurthy Nagar and the site of the first Collector’s office — in commemorating the man whose name remains, as contemporary accounts note, still spoken with reverence in the district two centuries after his departure.

SITE No. 27

JNTU College of Engineering

Location: JNTU Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The JNTUA College of Engineering, Anantapur, was established in 1946 under India’s post-war reconstruction programme, initially functioning at the Guindy campus in Madras for two years before being shifted to Anantapur in 1948. It was formally inaugurated in the town by the then Chief Minister, O. Ramaswamy Reddiar.

Around 300 acres of land were acquired for a new campus, and by 1958 the college’s main building, three laboratories, a workshop block, and a power house had been constructed at a total cost of eighteen lakh rupees — a substantial investment for a district college in the early years of independent India. The college was affiliated first to Madras University (1946–1955) and then to Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati (1955–1972).

In 1972, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) was established at Hyderabad, and the college was brought into its fold as JNTU College of Engineering, Anantapur, alongside sister institutions at Kakinada and Nagarjunasagar. Following the 2008 division of JNTU Hyderabad into four independent universities, the Anantapur college became the founding constituent college of the newly created Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Anantapur (JNTUA), which now also oversees the Oil Technological Research Institute and further constituent colleges at Pulivendula and Kalikiri.

Spread over a substantial campus and with roots reaching back nearly eighty years, JNTUA College of Engineering remains one of the district’s most important institutions of technical education, having trained generations of engineers under conditions its own alumni have recalled — in the college’s own centenary accounts — as ranging from kerosene-lamp classrooms in its earliest years to a modern, multi-department campus today.

SITE No. 28

TV Tower

Location: Lenin Nagar, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The TV Tower in Lenin Nagar is Anantapur’s television relay and transmission tower, part of the infrastructure built by Doordarshan, India’s public broadcaster, to extend television signal coverage into district towns across the country from the 1970s and 1980s onward, as the medium expanded beyond the major metropolitan centres.

Towers of this kind typically combine a tall lattice steel structure supporting transmission antennae with an associated ground-level studio or relay station building, and were, at the time of their construction, among the tallest structures in their respective towns — a distinction the Anantapur TV Tower held locally for a period after its erection.

The tower’s presence in Lenin Nagar reflects the broader modernisation of Anantapur’s civic infrastructure through the later twentieth century, running in parallel with the expansion of educational institutions such as JNTU College of Engineering and the Oil Technological Research Institute, as the town grew from a colonial-era district headquarters into a modern administrative and educational centre.

While newer satellite and cable technologies have since reduced the everyday reliance on terrestrial relay towers of this kind, the structure remains a recognisable landmark on Anantapur’s skyline and a marker of the town’s mid-to-late twentieth-century development.

SITE No. 29

Rani Mahal

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Pending

Rani Mahal, situated in Anantapur’s Old Town, is understood locally to have been associated with a residence of royal or noble standing — the name translating literally as “Queen’s Palace.” Buildings of this description in Rayalaseema towns typically trace their origins to the residences of local zamindars, palegar chieftains, or other landed nobility whose estates were consolidated or altered under British rule following the suppression of the palegar system by Thomas Munro in the early 1800s.

Its location within the Old Town, rather than the newer civil administrative quarter developed by the British around Court Road, suggests the building predates or stands apart from the colonial administrative core, aligning it instead with the older pre-British settlement pattern of Anantapur that also includes the Old Town’s historic temples and the Jamia Mosque at Hussain Peera.

As with several sites in the Old Town whose detailed documented histories remain to be fully compiled, Rani Mahal’s precise origins and original occupants await fuller archival research, and its blue-plaque status is accordingly recorded as pending fixation pending further study by district heritage authorities.

Nonetheless, the building’s evocative name and its place within Anantapur’s historic core mark it as one of the more intriguing sites on the district’s heritage list, warranting continued local and scholarly interest as its history is more fully documented.

SITE No. 30

Iron Bridge

Location: Subash Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Iron Bridge on Subash Road is one of two nineteenth or early twentieth-century iron-girder bridges recorded in Anantapur’s heritage listing, built to carry road traffic across one of the town’s water channels or tank overflow courses as part of the colonial administration’s public works programme.

Iron and steel girder bridges of this type became common across British India from the second half of the nineteenth century, as prefabricated ironwork — often manufactured in Britain and shipped for on-site assembly — offered a durable and relatively quick alternative to traditional masonry arch construction, particularly for spans over seasonal watercourses prone to flash flooding, a significant consideration in a district as tank-dependent as Anantapur.

Subash Road’s bridge would have formed part of the town’s expanding road network as Anantapur grew from its role as Thomas Munro’s early district headquarters into a fuller administrative and commercial centre through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, connecting different quarters of the town across its network of tanks and channels.

The bridge remains in use as part of the town’s road infrastructure, and its inclusion in the heritage listing recognises the engineering heritage of Anantapur’s colonial-era public works alongside its more overtly ceremonial and religious monuments.

SITE No. 31

Iron Bridge

Location: Rachanapalli, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

A second Iron Bridge, located at Rachanapalli, forms a companion structure to the Iron Bridge on Subash Road within Anantapur’s heritage listing, together representing the town’s surviving stock of colonial-era ironwork road bridges.

Bridges of this design typically employed riveted wrought-iron or steel lattice girders resting on masonry abutments and piers, a construction method that allowed British-era engineers to span the district’s tank overflow channels and seasonal streams — fed by local water sources such as the Pandameru — with structures more resilient to flood damage than traditional stone arches.

Rachanapalli’s location on the outskirts of the town core meant that this bridge likely served an important connecting role between Anantapur town and its surrounding agricultural hinterland, facilitating the movement of goods, particularly groundnut and other agricultural produce for which the district became well known, between rural producing areas and the town’s markets and processing facilities.

Like its counterpart on Subash Road, the Rachanapalli Iron Bridge continues to serve local traffic today, standing as a functional piece of nineteenth or early twentieth-century civil engineering heritage within the wider Anantapur town area.

SITE No. 32

Neeruganti Veedi

Location: Rani Nagar, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Neeruganti Veedi — literally “the street of the Neerugantis” — takes its name from the Neeruganti community, a traditional occupational group in Telugu-speaking regions historically responsible for managing the distribution of irrigation water from village tanks and channels to individual fields, a role of particular importance in a chronically water-scarce district like Anantapur.

Street and locality names of this kind, reflecting the traditional occupation of the community historically resident there, are a common feature of old town quarters across South India, where settlements were historically organised along caste and occupational lines — weavers, potters, water-distributors, and others each typically occupying their own veedi or street within the town.

The survival of this name into the present day, within what is now the Rani Nagar area of Anantapur, offers a living link to the town’s traditional agrarian social organisation, in which the fair and orderly distribution of scarce tank water — the same water managed by the Neeruganti community from which the street takes its name — was fundamental to the functioning of the local agricultural economy.

As a heritage site, Neeruganti Veedi is recognised less for a single monument than for the social and occupational history embedded in its name, preserving the memory of a traditional water-management role central to daily life in old Anantapur.

SITE No. 33

Pushkarani

Location: Cheruvu Katta, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

The Pushkarani at Cheruvu Katta is a temple tank — a stepped, typically rectangular water tank attached to a temple complex, used for ritual bathing and purification by devotees before worship, as well as for the ceremonial immersion of temple deities during annual festivals.

Pushkaranis of this kind are a standard feature of South Indian temple architecture, and this one’s location at Cheruvu Katta places it within the same sacred tank-side precinct that includes the neighbouring Basavanna Katta, Musalamma Katta, and Kashi Visweswara Swamy Temple, forming a coherent cluster of religious sites clustered around Anantapur’s traditional water bodies.

The pairing of a pushkarani with the district’s broader tank-based irrigation landscape reflects how thoroughly religious ritual and practical water management were historically intertwined in Rayalaseema, a region where the sanctity accorded to tanks and their associated shrines helped reinforce community stewardship of scarce water resources.

The Pushkarani continues to serve its traditional ritual functions for the temples of the Cheruvu Katta cluster, remaining an active part of local religious practice as well as a heritage site in its own right.

SITE No. 34

Beerappa Gudi

Location: Old Town, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Beerappa Gudi is a shrine dedicated to Beerappa (also known as Beereshwara or Mallanna), a folk deity widely venerated across the Rayalaseema and wider Telangana–Karnataka border region, particularly among pastoral and agrarian communities such as the Kuruba/Golla shepherd castes.

Beerappa worship is typically associated with oral epic traditions — recounted by traditional bards and folk performers — narrating the deity’s heroic deeds, and shrines dedicated to him are often modest structures compared to the grander Vijayanagara-era temples nearby, reflecting Beerappa’s status as a folk or popular deity rather than a deity of the classical Sanskritic pantheon.

Its location in the Old Town places Beerappa Gudi within the same historic core as the Virupaksheswara Swamy and Sri Chennakesava Swamy temples, illustrating the coexistence, within a single old settlement, of grand dynastic temple patronage and more localised folk devotional traditions rooted in the pastoral and agrarian communities that have long populated the district.

The shrine continues to be venerated locally, particularly during Beerappa’s associated festival period, and represents an important strand of Anantapur’s folk-religious heritage alongside its better-documented classical temples.

SITE No. 35

Pandameru Vagu

Location: Upparapalli Road, Ananthapuramu     |     Plaque Status: Completed

Pandameru Vagu refers to a stretch of the Pandameru, one of the seasonal streams (vagu, in Telugu) that historically supplied water to Anantapur district’s network of irrigation tanks, flowing through the Kanaganipalli, Raptadu, Anantapur, and B. K. Samudram mandals along its course.

In a district as chronically water-scarce as Anantapur — situated in the rain shadow of the Indian peninsula and reliant historically on tank rather than canal or river irrigation — seasonal streams such as the Pandameru played an outsized role in sustaining the tank system, including the great Anantasagaram tank from which the town itself takes its name, by channelling monsoon run-off into the district’s reservoirs.

The stretch of the Pandameru recognised here, along Upparapalli Road on the edge of the town, reflects the practical importance of such watercourses to Anantapur’s agricultural economy — an economy historically centred on groundnut cultivation that has depended on the district’s fragile tank-and-stream irrigation network for generations.

As a natural rather than built heritage site, Pandameru Vagu’s inclusion in the district’s heritage listing reflects a growing recognition that Anantapur’s water bodies and watercourses — not only its temples, churches, and colonial-era buildings — form an integral part of the district’s historical and environmental heritage.