Malkhed (Manyakheta)

A large modern Buddhist vihara opened in 2009 on the Sedam road, its 70-foot central dome and gateways drawing on the Sanchi, Sarnath, Ajanta and Nagpur traditions — a serene, contemporary counterpoint to the city’s medieval monuments.

An irrigation dam and reservoir on the Bennethora river in the Chittapur belt, its long bund and open water a quiet stop in the district’s dry countryside.

The dargah of the 14th- to 15th-century Sufi saint Khwaja Bande Nawaz Gesu Daraz, one of the most revered Sufi shrines in South India — an Indo-Saracenic complex with painted interiors, a historic library and a vast annual urs.

A walled group of seven great Bahmani royal tombs on the eastern edge of the city — "haft gumbaz", the seven domes — the largest being the twin-domed mausoleum of Sultan Firoz Shah Bahmani.

The Bahmani citadel rebuilt by Ala-ud-din Bahman Shah in the 14th century when Gulbarga became the sultanate’s first capital — a moated fort with double walls, fifteen towers and old cannon, enclosing the great Jama Masjid and ruined palaces.

The grand mosque built inside Gulbarga Fort around 1367, its entire courtyard famously roofed by scores of domes and arched bays — a design often said to echo the Great Mosque of Córdoba, and one of the earliest such mosques in the Deccan.

The principal shrine of the 18th-century philosopher-saint Sharana Basaveshwara in the heart of Kalaburagi, set beside a large sacred tank; a major Lingayat pilgrimage centre with a great annual jatre and chariot festival.

A 14th-century Bahmani mosque with a broad arcaded prayer hall and an adjoining square domed tomb, a lesser-visited monument of the old capital.

A tall, isolated 14th-century Bahmani tomb on a rise near the city, known for the strong echo under its great dome; its massive proportions are said to have anticipated Bijapur’s Gol Gumbaz.

The ruined pleasure-capital founded on the Bhima around 1400 by Sultan Firoz Shah Bahmani — a walled city with a mosque, palace and gateways, now a quiet field of Bahmani ruins south-west of Kalaburagi.

The excavated Maha Stupa at Kanaganahalli near Sannati — a roughly 2,000-year-old "Adholoka Maha Chaitya" ringed by carved limestone panels, including a unique portrait relief of Emperor Ashoka; one of the most important early Buddhist finds in the Deccan.

The Chandralamba (Chandrala Parameshwari) temple on the Bhima at Sannati — a Shakta pilgrimage site whose 1986 collapse of a slab revealed rare Ashokan edicts, linking the living temple to one of India’s oldest Buddhist landscapes.