Bengaluru Travel Guide: Gardens, Palaces, Museums and Day Trips

Most of the sights fall into two areas a few kilometres apart: the green centre around Cubbon Park and Vidhana Soudha, and the old city and the south, with KR Market, Lalbagh and Basavanagudi. Plan each day by area and you spend less of it on the road.

Lalbagh Botanical Garden

Lalbagh is a 240-acre botanical garden in the south of the city, begun by Hyder Ali around 1760 and enlarged by Tipu Sultan; the state's Department of Horticulture runs it today. Look for the Glass House of 1889, the lake, and the Kempegowda watchtower on an outcrop of peninsular gneiss more than 3,000 million years old. The gates open at 6 am every day, and the cool early hours are the best time to walk; Lalbagh station on the metro's Green Line is beside one of the entrances. Flower shows fill the Glass House around Republic Day in January and Independence Day in August.

Cubbon Park

Cubbon Park, officially Sri Chamarajendra Park, covers about 300 acres in the centre of the city. It was laid out in 1870 and is also looked after by the Department of Horticulture. Around its edges stand some of Bengaluru's best-known buildings: the red Attara Kacheri, built in 1864 and home to the High Court of Karnataka since independence, and the red Seshadri Iyer Memorial Hall, which houses the State Central Library. The Government Museum and the Venkatappa Art Gallery are on Kasturba Road at the park's edge. Several internal roads close to traffic on Sundays and public holidays, so Sunday morning is the calmest time to walk or cycle.

Vidhana Soudha

Across Ambedkar Veedhi from Cubbon Park, Vidhana Soudha is the seat of Karnataka's legislature: a granite building in a neo-Dravidian style, lit up at night. You can see the façade from the road at any time. To go inside, book the guided walking tour run by KSTDC, the state tourism corporation. It lasts about 90 minutes, in English or Kannada, and runs on the second and fourth Saturdays and on Sundays of each month; booking is required in advance, and original ID is checked at the entrance.

Bangalore Palace

Bangalore Palace, in Vasanth Nagar, is a 19th-century Tudor-style palace modelled on Windsor Castle, with turrets, battlements, carved wooden ceilings and portraits of maharajas and viceroys. Karnataka Tourism dates the first house on the site to 1878; it was bought and enlarged by Maharaja Chamarajendra Wadiyar, and his descendants still own it. It is open daily, with Karnataka Tourism giving 10 am to 5.30 pm, and an audio guide is available. Allow two to three hours. The palace and its grounds are also hired for concerts, exhibitions and private events, which can close it to visitors, so check before you go.

Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace and KR Market

In the old city, about a kilometre from KR Market, Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace is a two-storey palace of the late 18th century, built mostly of teak in an Indo-Islamic style, which now houses a museum run by the Archaeological Survey of India. KR Market itself, one of the city's largest wholesale markets, is busiest early in the morning, when flowers, fruit and vegetables arrive for the traders. The Jamia Masjid, the city's largest mosque, stands in the market area, and KR Market has its own metro station.

Bull Temple, Basavanagudi

The Dodda Basavana Gudi, or Bull Temple, was built in 1537 under Kempe Gowda I, the chieftain regarded as Bengaluru's founder. It is built around a giant monolithic Nandi carved from a single granite rock and stands on Bugle Rock, with the Dodda Ganapathi temple a short walk away. The temple is open from 6 am to 8 pm; remove your shoes and dress modestly. Each year in the Hindu month of Karthika, usually November or December, the Kadalekai Parishe groundnut fair fills the streets around it.

ISKCON Temple, Rajajinagar

On Hare Krishna Hill in Rajajinagar, the ISKCON temple, formally Sri Radha Krishna-Chandra Mandir, combines carved granite steps and tall gopurams with a gold-plated flagpost. Daily aartis are held for its deities, and the complex has a Vedic museum and a restaurant. It is at its busiest and most brightly lit at Janmashtami, Ratha Yatra and Vaikuntha Ekadashi.

Bengaluru's museums

Beside Cubbon Park on Kasturba Road, the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum was opened by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962 and is run by the National Council of Science Museums; it is open every day from 9.30 am to 6 pm except Deepavali and Ganesha Chaturthi. The Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), which opened its building in 2023, holds more than 100,000 works of South Asian art. Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath on Kumara Krupa Road has several galleries, including one devoted to Nicholas Roerich, and the Indian Music Experience in J P Nagar, closed on Mondays, has nine galleries on Indian music.

Bannerghatta Biological Park

About 22 km south of the city centre, Bannerghatta Biological Park combines a zoo, a safari by bus or jeep through lion, tiger and bear enclosures, and a butterfly park that opened in 2006. It is closed on Tuesdays. The safari runs from 10 am to 4.30 pm, and weekend jeep slots fill early, so book ahead if you are going on a Saturday or Sunday.

Eat the way the city does. Karnataka Tourism points visitors to the traditional darshinis serving idli, dosa and filter coffee, alongside newer restaurants cooking regional dishes. MG Road and Brigade Road, about 1.5 km from Cubbon Park, are the main shopping and dining streets, and Bengaluru is a good place to buy silk, handicrafts and spices.

Walk early. Cubbon Park is quietest on Sunday mornings, when several of its roads are closed to traffic; Ulsoor Lake and Sankey Tank are two of the city's lakes with room for a walk; and KR Market is at its liveliest at dawn, when the produce comes in.

Look at the calendar. The city has a full programme of classical music, theatre and art exhibitions. Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath holds Chitra Santhe, a street art fair, every year; the Karaga, one of Bengaluru's oldest festivals, brings processions through the old city in March or April; and the Kadalekai Parishe groundnut fair fills Basavanagudi in November or December.

Take a tour. Besides the Vidhana Soudha walking tour, KSTDC runs a double-decker hop-on hop-off bus in the city; check that it is running on your dates, as the service is sometimes suspended.

Bengaluru can be visited all year. Karnataka Tourism calls October to February the most pleasant months for sightseeing (one of its pages extends the window to March). The India Meteorological Department's averages for 1991–2020 show why winter is the easy season: December, January and February are the driest months, each with less than 16 mm of rain, and average daytime highs run from about 27°C to 31°C. April is the hottest month, averaging about 34°C by day.

Rain builds from May and peaks in September and October, the two wettest months, with about 208 mm and 186 mm on average, so October can still be wet. From June to October daytime averages stay around 28–30°C, and the museums make good use of a wet afternoon.

Festivals worth timing a trip around: the Lalbagh flower shows around Republic Day in January and Independence Day in August, the Karaga in March or April, and the Kadalekai Parishe in November or December.

Nandi Hills, about 60 km away, is the classic early start. The gates open at 6 am; the sunrise viewpoint is near the top, Tipu's Drop is a cliff with views over the valley, and the Bhoga Nandeeshwara temple stands at the base of the hill. Weekends are crowded, so leave early. Bannerghatta Biological Park, 22 km south, fits into a half day.

Mysuru, about 140 km southwest, can be done in a long day or with a night there; our Mysore travel guide and Mysore tours and experiences cover the city. For a weekend, Coorg (Kodagu), in the Western Ghats among coffee plantations, and Hampi, with the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire on the Tungabhadra and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are both within a day's drive; see our Coorg travel guide and Hampi travel guide. For the rest of the state, start with the Karnataka travel guide, browse Karnataka tours and experiences or our private Karnataka tour packages.