Bengaluru: From colonial cocktails and forgotten battlefields to hidden hillocks and vanished neighbourhoods, Bengaluru’s streets are revealing stories that most residents pass by every day without noticing.
As part of Anubhava Hubba under Bengaluru Hubba, a series of curated heritage walks is drawing citizens into the city’s layered past.Being held over 10 days, the walks take participants through MG Road, Avenue Road, Gavipuram and the Cantonment, KR Market and many other spots, offering fresh perspectives on familiar spaces. Led by heritage collectives INTACH, Bengaluru by Foot, Gully Tours, Heritage Beku, Suchitra Deep and Bengaluru Prayana, the initiative highlight how Bengaluru’s evolving urban landscape continues to carry traces of war, water systems, colonial life and community memory beneath its modern surface.How malaria in Bengaluru gave the world gin and tonic — and other colonial surprisesFew Bengalureans sipping a gin and tonic on MG Road realise the drink has its roots in colonial India’s battle with malaria. During the Colonial Crawl heritage walk, historians traced how British officers in India relied on quinine-based tonic water to prevent malaria, only to mix it with gin to counter its bitterness, inadvertently creating one of the world’s most popular cocktails. The story was narrated fittingly near Tonique on MG Road.The walk also revealed that the building housing Hard Rock Cafe once served a very different purpose. Established in 1860, it was home to the Bible Society Press, where the first Kannada Bible was printed. A century later, Queen Elizabeth II visited the site in 1960 to mark 100 years of the publication, a history now largely forgotten amid Bengaluru’s nightlife and music scene.How a decisive March 1791 battle still lies buried beneath Avenue RoadFew Bengalureans walking through the crowded lanes of Avenue Road realised they are moving through the site of a decisive 18th-Century battle. In March 1791, during the third Anglo-Mysore War, British forces launched the Storming of Bangalore, laying siege to Tipu Sultan’s fort that then dominated this area. What is now a dense commercial corridor was once open ground outside the fort walls, where British troops advanced, artillery was positioned, and fierce fighting unfolded over several days.Over time, the once-extensive Bengaluru Fort was dismantled and built over as the city expanded. Today, only a small surviving section near KR Market remains, while Avenue Road bustles above what was once a battlefield. Hidden hillocks and forgotten towers of GavipuramMany are unaware that Gavipuram, better known for the Gavi Gangadhareshwara temple, hides some of the city’s most unusual 16th-Century remnants.
During the recent heritage walk, participants were introduced to Harihara Gutta, a little-known hillock dotted with structures dating back to the Vijayanagara period. Among them is a rare stone umbrella-like structure whose purpose remains debated, believed by some to be a symbolic Vishnu chakra, while others see it as a watch point.The walk also revealed three lesser-known watchtowers resembling Kempegowda’s iconic boundary towers, challenging the popular belief that only four such towers exist in Bengaluru.
Participants were also shown centuries-old sluice gates near the shrinking Kempambudhi Lake, reminders of the city’s once-sophisticated water management system.Behind the shops of Commercial StreetMost Bengalureans see Commercial Street as a chaotic shopping hub, rarely realising it once doubled as a lived-in neighbourhood tied closely to the British cantonment. During the heritage walk, participants learned that shops occupied the ground floors while families lived quietly above them.Unlike Residency Road or St Mark’s Road, where British officers lived, Commercial Street housed service communities, dhobis, merchants, carpenters, bankers and traders who supported Britishers’ lives. Their compact homes blended South Indian layouts with subtle European influences, featuring katte seating, internal courtyards and tight corridors designed for joint families. Few shoppers walking into the Zudio store on Commercial Street realised the building once housed one of the old and most loved eateries called Woody’s.
Long before that, the same premises functioned as the shop of Ruben Moses, a Jewish craftsman known for making customised handmade leather shoes for European clients, including British officers. The building’s journey — from a colonial shoe shop to a beloved eatery and now a retail chain — quietly mirrors Commercial Street’s transformation from a Cantonment-era marketplace to a modern shopping hub.Walk GuideBhavana Jain from Gully Tours: I was born and brought up in the Cantonment area, and I’ve seen homes, families and entire neighbourhoods disappear over the years. These walks are my way of collecting, documenting and holding on to whatever little history still remains before it vanishes completely.
