Nayakanahatti Thipperudra Swamy Temple

The great Jagadguru Murugharajendra Brihanmath of Chitradurga, a 17th-century Lingayat monastery and one of the most influential mathas of central Karnataka, with the adjoining Muruga Vana — a sculpture garden and green retreat.

The marquee monument of the district — the "Kallina Kote" or Elu Suttina Kote, a vast seven-walled hill fort on granite outcrops, held by the Chitradurga Nayakas and later Hyder Ali, with temples, granaries, water tanks and the legendary Onake Obavva rock cleft within.

The narrow rock cleft in the Chitradurga fort where, in the 1770s, the woman Obavva is said to have single-handedly held off Hyder Ali’s soldiers with only an onake (pestle) as they tried to slip through one by one — a celebrated episode of Kannada valour, marked within the fort.

An archaeological valley between three hills ~4 km from the fort where Satavahana, Maurya, Roman and Chinese coins have been found, with the subterranean Ankali Mutt cave-monastery, the Bhairaveshwara shrine and Chandravalli lake — one of the older excavated settlement sites of Karnataka.

Adumalleshwara combines a Shiva cave shrine and Nandi spring with a separately managed mini-zoo on the Jogimatti side of Chitradurga. Plan for two kinds of visit—worship and a zoo circuit—with their own entry rules and a retained road transfer.

The border town of Molakalmuru near the Andhra Pradesh line, famous for its handwoven Molakalmuru silk sarees — a distinctive pure-silk weaving tradition of intricate zari borders — and for the temple fairs of the surrounding taluk.

Jogimatti is the forested hill landscape south of Chitradurga, with views across the rocky plateau and a wider wildlife sanctuary. It is a separate daylight road outing whose permitted access must be confirmed before leaving town.

The Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath at Sirigere, a Lingayat monastery tracing to the 12th-century saint Marulasiddha, now the head of a wide network of schools and colleges across Karnataka — a living centre of Veerashaiva learning.

At the base of Brahmagiri hill near Molakalmuru stand 3rd-century-BCE minor rock edicts of Ashoka (naming the provincial capital Isila) alongside Neolithic–megalithic cist graves — the "Brahmagiri culture" type-site excavated by Mortimer Wheeler, one of Karnataka’s most important archaeological landscapes. (Distinct from the Western-Ghats Brahmagiri peak in Kodagu.)

A Dravidian Vijayanagara-era Shiva temple on the bank of the Vedavathi at Hiriyur, known for its ornate wooden temple car (teru) and its annual car festival — the heritage anchor of the town.

An open-air monolithic Ganapati at Holalkere, a large rock-cut Ganesha established in the 15th century by the local Nayaka — an unusual "bayalu" (open-field) shrine venerated across the region.

Karnataka’s oldest continuously operating dam, built by the Mysore Wodeyars across the Vedavathi (Hagari) river in 1907 and set in a gorge between hills, with terraced theme gardens, a rare Krishna Ficus tree and long reservoir views — on the Hiriyur–Hosadurga border.