Chennai, previously Madras, city, capital of Tamil Nadu state, southern India, on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. Known as the “Doorway to South India,” Chennai is a significant authoritative and social focus. Pop. (2001) city, 4,343,645; metropolitan agglom., 6,560,242
Armenian and Portuguese dealers were living in the San Thome area of what is currently present-day Chennai before the appearance of the British in 1639. Madras was the abbreviated name of the fishing town Madraspatnam, where the British East India Company fabricated a fortification and industrial facility (general store) in 1639-40. Around then, the winding of cotton textures was a neighborhood industry, and the English welcomed the weavers and local shippers to settle close to the fortification. By 1652 the production line of Fort St. George was perceived as an administration (a regulatory unit represented by a president), and somewhere in the range of 1668 and 1749 the organization extended its control. Around 1801, by which time the remainder of the neighborhood rulers had been shorn of his abilities, the English had become experts of southern India, and Madras had turned into their regulatory and business capital. The public authority of Tamil Nadu formally changed the name of the city to Chennai in 1996.
Madras made without a plan from its seventeenth century community, outlined by Fort St. George and the Indian quarters. Toward the north and northwest are the modern regions; the super neighborhoods are toward the west and south, where various current skyscraper apartment complexes have been developed, and the old towns are in the middle. The most unmistakable structures in the city are the seven enormous sanctuaries in the Dravidian style, arranged in the city areas of George Town, Mylapore, and Triplicane. The Chepauk Palace (the previous home of the nawab [Mughal ruler] of Karnataka) and the University Senate House, both in the Deccan Muslim style, and the Victoria Technical Institute and the High Court structures, both in the Indo-Saracenic style, are by and large viewed as the most alluring structures of the British time frame.
Chennai and its rural areas have in excess of 600 Hindu sanctuaries. The most established is the Parthasarathi Temple inherent the eighth century by Pallava rulers. The Kapaleeswarar Temple (sixteenth century) is focused on the Hindu god Shiva. Different spots of love inside the city incorporate Luz Church (1547-82), one of the most seasoned places of worship in Chennai; St. Mary’s Church (1678-80), the first British church in Quite a while; the San Thome Basilica (1898), worked over the burial place of the messenger St. Thomas. and Wallajah Mosque (1795), worked by the nawab of Karnataka. The Armenian Church of the Holy Virgin Mary (1772), in the George Town segment of Chennai, encompasses a yard graveyard with Armenian gravestones dating from the mid-seventeenth century. The worldwide central command of the Theosophical Society is arranged in gardens between the Adyar River and the coast. Specifically noteworthy there is a banyan tree dating from around 1600.