India - Karnataka - Bengaluru - Malleswaram

Malleswaram, one of the oldest planned neighborhoods in Bengaluru, was developed soon after the great plague of 1898. Like most areas of that time, it was built with conservancy lanes that run parallel to main roads. These were historically used for manual scavenging but now, many of these have now been encroached upon and used for parking vehicles.

Bengaluru Moving, a citizen's initiative collaborated with art collective Geechugalu to create murals spread across Malleswaram in an effort to make the lanes pedestrian-friendly.

Sent by Kanchana from Bengaluru in Karnataka State, India.

Malleshwaram is a northwest neighbourhood and one of the zones of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike in Bengaluru, India. It was planned in 1889  after the great plague of 1898, developed as a suburb in 1892 and handed over to the city municipality in 1895. As per the 1878 Survey of India map, the area came under the village of Ranganatha Palya and was later named after the Kadu Malleshwara Temple. The neighbourhood houses many offices, one them being World Trade Center Bengaluru. It has two shopping malls, Mantri Square and Orion Mall (at the two ends of the locality). As an education hub, it houses the education boards of the state KSEEB and PU boards, Mysore Education Society, Institute of Wood Science and Technology and Indian Institute of Science.

The earlier name of Malleshwaram was Mallapura as documented in the Ekoji Inscription of Malleshwaram dated to 1669 CE located in the precincts of the famous Kadu Malleshwara temple. It records the donation of the Maratha chief Ekoji, half brother of Shivaji who donated a village Medaraninganahalli for the upkeep of the Kadu Malleshwara temple. Medaraninganahalli was a village that was located around the IISc campus. Another undated Kannada inscription in Sampige road was documented in the supplementary Volume 9 of Epigraphia carnatica, it mentions that the inscription was found near Jakkarayanakere which corresponds to the area around Krishna Flour Mill in Sampige Road, Malleshwaram. Much of the text published is incomplete and is a possible donatory inscription. However, the existence of Jakkarayana kere (lake) near Sampige road documented more than a century ago is established (read more).