Mapping the city and unanswered questions

In 1976, Hampi was recognised as a site of national importance. In the early 1980s, a detailed survey began, to document the material remains through extensive surveys.

The whole area was divided into 25 squares, each named with a letter of the alphabet. Each square was subdivided into smaller squares, and these into still smaller units, so that every structure could be precisely located.

Thousands of structures were recorded, from small shrines and houses to elaborate temples, along with traces of roads, paths and bazaars. But the wooden parts of buildings, like columns, brackets and roofs, have vanished.

Travellers' accounts fill some gaps. Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz, Portuguese visitors, describe the city's bazaars as rich, with cheap and abundant goods of every kind.

But buildings cannot tell us everything. They do not tell us what ordinary men and women who lived and worked there thought, who planned them, or what the builders were paid. Stones speak for patrons, not for workers.