In this heritage Bangalore walk, we will trace the Anglo-Mysore influence in the heritage of Bangalore and visit the city’s largest green space- Cubbon Park. We will walk past magnificent trees, statues of towering personalities and some spectacular buildings. Attara Kacheri is a remarkable building designed in Gothic style. Built in 1867, Attara Kacheri was commissioned by Tipu Sultan to house the offices of 18 departments of revenue and general secretariat. Today it serves as the High Court for the state of Karnataka. We walk to the Central State Library which is another landmark of Cubbon Park. Built-in memory of Diwan Sir Seshadri Iyer, Diwan of Mysore, today it has more than 250000 books and is a paradise for the bibliophile! It is believed that this library has a copy of every book published in the State since 1970.

Our next destination in the heritage Bangalore walk is the Government Museum. This magnificent structure was built in 1877[ by Col. Richard Hieram Sankey, the Chief Engineer of Mysore State. It has a fantastic collection of ancient artifacts of early Indian civilizations like Indus Valley, a model of Srirangapatna fort of Tipu Sultan as well as Halmidi- the oldest Kannada script.

We walk to Venkatappa Gallery, which holds the paintings and other objects of art collected by Karnataka’s greatest artist Venkatappa who was a court painter of the Mysore Kings. The modernist building was built in 1975 and is designed like an artificial island with a beautiful moat and surrounded by a lotus pond.

The Vishweshwaraya Museum is a fascinating place which covers the history behind all major technological inventions from the teeny weeny Zipper to Jet Engines with simple and lucid explanations. In fact, most exhibits have a live demonstration to explain the concept, making it unique among places to visit in Bangalore. A rare exhibit is a replica of “Flyer”, the very first airplane flown by the Wright brothers in 1903. The Wright brothers had flown it four times on December 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in the USA. In order to reduce drag, the pilot flew lying on his stomach on the lower wing with his head toward the front.