Bengaluru (Bangalore)

Bengaluru, India's technology capital, has grown from a relatively modest garden city into the country's largest concentration of IT companies and startups, its transformation over the past three decades reshaping both its skyline and its identity. Beneath the glass office towers, the city retains pockets of its older character — Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Cubbon Park and the Bangalore Palace among them — offering green respite from the traffic and density that have come with rapid growth.

The city's craft beer and restaurant scene, among the most developed in India, alongside a significant resident international and pan-Indian population drawn by the tech industry, has given Bengaluru a genuinely cosmopolitan character distinct from most other Indian cities its size.

Founded, according to tradition, in 1537 by chieftain Kempe Gowda I, Bengaluru grew gradually through the colonial period before its dramatic late-20th-century transformation into India's leading technology hub, driven by a combination of climate, educational institutions and early public-sector electronics investment.

Bengaluru has a major international airport (Kempegowda) and is a significant railway hub.