Gudekote Fort

The shrine of the 15th-century Veerashaiva saint Guru Kottureshwara at Kotturu, built around an older Gadde Kalleshwara Chalukya temple; its February Rathotsava (car festival) draws around 200,000 pilgrims.

A hilltop Shiva (Jambunatheshwara) temple on a granite outcrop near Hosapete, reached by a stepped climb, giving quiet views over the town and the Tungabhadra plains.

The medieval royal suburb of Malapanagudi on the old Hampi–Hosapete road, with a large stepped tank, an octagonal domed bath and remains of the stone aqueduct that once carried water to the imperial capital.

One of the largest and best-preserved temple complexes at Hampi, near Kamalapura — a spacious Dravidian Rama temple with a tall gopuram, a big pillared mandapa and a colonnaded courtyard, and usually blissfully quiet.

The ASI site museum at Kamalapura, with galleries of Vijayanagara sculpture, arms, coins and inscriptions and a large scale-model of the whole Hampi ruin field — a useful orientation stop before or after the site.

A large early-16th-century temple at Ananthasayanagudi, about 5 km from Hosapete, built by Krishnadevaraya for a reclining (Ananthasayana) Vishnu; its rare barrel-vaulted brick-and-stone sanctum is one of very few of its kind, though the image is long gone.

A plain square exterior hiding an ornate arcaded bathing pavilion with a large sunken tank, projecting balconies and lotus-shaped fountains, once fed by aqueducts for the royal household.

The great three-tiered granite ceremonial platform at the heart of the Royal Enclosure, from which the Vijayanagara kings watched the Mahanavami (Dasara) festivities; its sides carry carved friezes of elephants, horses, hunts and dancers, with the stepped Pushkarani tank close by.

The compact royal chapel of the Vijayanagara kings, its outer walls and inner pillars covered in bands of relief carving telling the Ramayana — "a thousand Ramas".

The "Underground" Shiva temple — one of Hampi’s oldest shrines, built below the surrounding ground level so its pillared halls and sanctum, reached down a flight of steps, flood and stay cool; it sits on the road toward the royal centre.

A living Rama temple atop the boulder-strewn Malyavanta Hill on the Kampli road, where legend says Rama and Lakshmana waited out the monsoon; the walled complex has rows of monolithic lingas and wide views over the ruin field.

An elegant two-storey pavilion in the walled Zenana (ladies’) enclosure, blending Hindu and Islamic arches into a lotus-bud shape — once an airy retreat for the royal women.