Photograph showing the large gopuram (tower) of the Virupaksha Temple, at Vijayanagara in Karnataka. The Virupaksha temple lies to the west of the palace enclosures and is sacred to a form of Siva. It is also called Pampapati, or Consort of Pampa, after the local goddess Pampa who was identified with Durga or Parvati, Siva's spouse. The Virupaksha temple, built between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, is the only sacred complex still used for worship, with an annual festival celebrating the marriage of the deities. The complex includes pre-Vijayanagara shrines, two gopurams or temple towers, the taller of which was erected by the illustrious Krishnadevaraya who ruled between 1509 and 1529, and the other being renovated in the seventeenth century. 

Vijayanagara (Beejanuggur), the City of Victory, was the seat of a powerful Hindu kingdom in Southern India from 1336 to 1565 and it flourished as a prosperous centre of Hindu art, culture and architecture until the Battle of Talikota in 1565.