The Forts of Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu’s forts read like the strata of a cliff face — layer on layer of ambition set in granite. The oldest are the hill citadels raised by Vijayanagara viceroys and the Nayak governors who succeeded them after the empire broke at Talikota in 1565, strongholds built to command the plains from bare rock. Over these came the fortresses of the eighteenth-century Carnatic Wars, when the Nawabs of Arcot, the French and the English East India Company fought for the Coromandel and the sepoy armies that would decide India’s fate were first drilled beneath their walls. Ringing the coast are the trading forts of Europe — Danish, Dutch and British — small castles built to guard warehouses of cotton, indigo and pepper. Together they map the moment when a scatter of ports and hill-forts hardened into a colonial empire.

The great hill forts

The mightiest is Gingee Fort in Viluppuram district, sprawled across three granite hills — Rajagiri, Krishnagiri and Chandrayandurg — linked by some 13 km of walls. Begun by local chiefs and hugely expanded under the Gingee Nayaks in the sixteenth century, it was so strong that Shivaji, who captured it in 1677, is said to have called it the most impregnable fortress in India; later British writers dubbed it the “Troy of the East”. Within its walls survive the tiered Kalyana Mahal with its pyramidal tower, granaries, temples and a rock-cut audience hall, and over the centuries the fort passed in turn to the Marathas, the Mughals, the Nawabs of the Carnatic, the French and finally the British. Further south the Dindigul Fort crowns a bare dome of rock and was fortified by the Madurai Nayaks in the early seventeenth century before passing to Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore. At Tiruchirappalli the Rockfort rises abruptly from the middle of the city, its ancient rock-cut temples changing hands repeatedly during the Carnatic Wars. The single-rock citadel of Namakkal, perched on the 75-metre Namagiri hill, and the twin-hill Krishnagiri Fort near the old Baramahal frontier complete the line of inland strongholds.

Forts of the Carnatic Wars

When European rivalries reached the Coromandel, older forts became prizes. Vellore Fort, raised in granite by Vijayanagara chieftains around 1566 and ringed by a broad water moat, is among the best preserved of them all. Inside stand the ornate Jalakandeswarar temple, a gem of Vijayanagara architecture whose lingam once sat surrounded by water, and the barracks where, on 10 July 1806, Indian sepoys rose against the East India Company in the Vellore Mutiny — the first large-scale sepoy revolt, half a century before 1857. The rising was fuelled in part by the presence of the sons and family of Tipu Sultan, held in the fort after his death at Seringapatam in 1799, and by resentment at new dress regulations that offended Hindu and Muslim sepoys alike. The nearby fort of Arcot, seat of the Nawabs of the Carnatic, gave its name to Robert Clive’s celebrated defence during the siege of 1751. To the south, Ranjankudi Fort near Perambalur — built by Vijayanagara Nayakas and held by the Nawab — was fought over in the same wars, while Sankagiri Fort in Salem district, a tiered hill stronghold, passed from Vijayanagara hands to Mysore and then the British.

The European coastal forts

Fort St George in Chennai was the first English fortress in India: its foundations were laid in 1640 and the walls completed on St George’s Day, 23 April 1644, giving the town of Madras — and eventually the Madras Presidency — its nucleus. Inside its walls stand St Mary’s Church, the oldest Anglican church east of Suez, and the Fort Museum, while the complex still serves as the seat of the Tamil Nadu government. Down the Coromandel, other European powers built their own castles. The Danes raised Fort Dansborg at Tharangambadi, once called Tranquebar, in 1620, after Admiral Ove Gjedde secured a lease from the Thanjavur Nayak ruler; it remains one of the largest Danish forts anywhere. The Dutch East India Company built Fort Geldria at Pulicat in 1613 — the capital of Dutch Coromandel — along with the smaller Sadras fort near Kalpakkam, a walled trading post beside the sea. The British acquired Fort St David at Cuddalore in 1690 — named by Governor Elihu Yale after the Welsh saint — and made it their headquarters in southern India in 1746, while the now-ruined Alamparai fort, once the Nawab’s minting port, was gifted to the French.

The forts of the deep south

In the far south the story belongs to Travancore and its extraordinary commander Eustachius De Lannoy, a Flemish officer of the Dutch Company captured at the Battle of Colachel in 1741 and taken into the service of Maharaja Marthanda Varma. Under his direction Travancore rebuilt Udayagiri Fort near Thuckalay between 1741 and 1744 — De Lannoy is buried within its walls — and raised the sea-girt Vattakottai Fort near Kanyakumari, a granite bastion whose ramparts run down into the surf. Inland, the seventeenth-century Thirumayam Fort in Pudukkottai, built by the Ramnad Sethupathi Vijaya Raghunatha in 1687 as a ring-fort of concentric walls, later became a flashpoint of the Polygar Wars against the British.

Visiting the forts

Most of these forts are protected monuments and either free to enter or charge a small ticket, so the practical questions are less about cost than climate and legs. The hill citadels — Gingee, the Trichy Rockfort, Dindigul and Namakkal — mean steep climbs over sun-baked granite, best tackled soon after opening with water and firm shoes; Gingee alone can swallow the better part of a day. The city forts are easier: Vellore Fort and Fort St George both sit in the heart of their towns and reward a slow wander, each with museums inside. The coastal forts pair naturally with a beach and a seafood lunch, whether at Tharangambadi, Sadras or Cuddalore. To go deeper into two of the greatest, read our companion features at /india/tamil-nadu/guides/gingee-fort-story and /india/tamil-nadu/guides/vellore-golden-temple-and-fort-story.