ThiruvananthapuramThiruvananthapuram

The name means the city of Anantha, the thousand-headed serpent on whom Vishnu reclines as Padmanabha. For centuries the region belonged to the Ay chieftains and then to Venad, a small coastal kingdom whose rulers would one day redraw the map of southern Kerala.

That transformation came with Marthanda Varma, who between 1729 and 1758 swallowed his rivals to forge the kingdom of Travancore. In 1750 he dedicated the entire realm to Sree Padmanabha and thereafter ruled as the deity's servant, Padmanabhadasa. In 1795 his successor, Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma, moved the capital from Padmanabhapuram to Thiruvananthapuram, and the temple town became a royal city.

The nineteenth century turned it into a seat of learning. Swathi Thirunal, the composer-king, founded an observatory and an English school that grew into University College, while his successors added hospitals, a public library, the zoo of 1857 and the Napier Museum, completed in 1880. On 12 November 1936 Sree Chithira Thirunal issued the Temple Entry Proclamation, opening Travancore's temples to Hindus of every caste — a landmark of Indian social reform.

The city became capital of Travancore–Cochin in 1949 and of the new state of Kerala in 1956. In 1990 it opened Technopark, India's first technology park, and in 2025 the deep-water port at Vizhinjam was commissioned a few kilometres from Kovalam's beaches — a reminder that this coast has always looked outward to the sea.