Short cards for the towns, hills, and river-sites that carry this history. Each card says only what the research behind this site can carry. Fuller stories live on the Ancient, Medieval, and To Independence pages.
Bhattiprolu
In the Krishna delta of historic Guntur district — old Repalle taluk. Official memory identifies it with Prataliputra / Pratipalapura, the earliest remembered kingdom in the district. The published horizon is the great brick stupa excavated by Alexander Rea in 1892: three relic caskets, a gosthi of the town headed by king Kuberaka, bodily relics of the Buddha, early Brahmi not later than about 200 BCE. Official pages date Kubera around 230 BC. The script is often remembered as a parent of later Telugu letters.
Amaravati / Dharanikota
On the south bank of the Krishna. Dharanikota is ancient Dhanyakataka, widely identified as a Satavahana — and, before them, a Sada — city. Beside it rose the Mahachaitya of Amaravati. Colin Mackenzie first surveyed the mound in 1798. Buddhists established a seat of learning here in official district memory. The Kotas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries called themselves lords of Dhanyavati and devotees of Amaresvara. After taking Kondavidu on 23 June 1515, Krishnadevaraya visited Amaresvara and performed tulapurusha on the river. Xuanzang’s Dhanakataka, about 640 CE, is identified with this place in the standard reading.
Chebrolu
Ancient Tambrape (also Tambrapuri — “city of copper” in local explanation of the inscriptions). A first-century CE Prakrit inscription records a mutt and chaitya. In 207 CE Satavahana Vijaya’s Sanskrit pillar names the Saptamatrika temple. A cluster of four temples — Chaturmukha Brahmeswara, Bhimeswara, Adikesava, Nageswara — is dated to the ninth–twelfth centuries; Bhimeswara is attributed to Eastern Chalukya Chalukya Bhima. Kakatiya Jayapa governed the city of Shanmukha from here in 1213 and built the Chodesvara temple in 1235. The pond-shrine of Chaturmukha Brahmeswara as seen today was largely remodelled by Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu in the eighteenth century.
Undavalli
A four-storeyed rock-cut temple on the right bank of the Krishna, opposite the Amaravati group, dedicated to the Hindu trinity, with Anantasayi Vishnu as principal deity. ASI Amaravati Circle dates the earliest phase, on style, to the early to mid-seventh century CE. Popular and tourism accounts still give the fourth and fifth centuries and the Vishnukundins. Both dates are named honestly on this site. A Telugu label reads “Sri-Utpattipidugu.” Reddy chiefs and Krishnadevaraya later honoured the place.
Nagarjunakonda
Ancient Vijayapuri, Ikshvaku capital on the Krishna in the Palnadu country of historic Guntur district, about 225–310 CE. Citadel, theatre, monasteries, Brahmanical temples; royal women the great Buddhist donors. A mahachaitya of the Aparamahavinaseliya; a reliquary said to contain a tooth of the Buddha. Official memory remembers it, with Dhanyakataka, as an ancient university town. The Nagarjunasagar reservoir submerged the valley; selected monuments stand on the island museum. The hill-name Nagarjunakonda is later than the Ikshvaku city.
Gurazala, Macherla, Karempudi
The Palnadu triangle. Gurazala (Madhavipattana) was the seat of a twelfth-century Haihaya house — in the stones from 1103. Macherla is Malideva’s town in the katha, and later a Kakatiya grant-place (1313–14, including a temple of heroes) and a Qutb Shahi lamp-grant site (1619) at Chenna Kesava, where the epic is still sung. Karempudi, on the Naguleru, is the remembered field of Palnati Yuddham. The Haihayas are real. The battle as sung is later literature. Kakatiya grants returned here in the early fourteenth century.
Kondavidu / Kondaveedu
A ridge of hill forts west of Guntur. Thirteenth-century Yadava-Choda inscriptions show the hill already built before the Reddis. The Reddi kingdom moved here from Addanki in the mid-fourteenth century. A fourteenth-century Siva-temple grant was found on Rudrapada peak in 2026. Gajapati governors held it from the 1450s. Krishnadevaraya took it on 23 June 1515; Nadendla Gopa remained governor in 1520. Ibrahim Qutb Shah took it in April 1579; the sarkar became Murtazanagar. A tradition that Gopanna fortified the village in 1115 is tradition.
Mangalagiri
A hill of Narasimha, south-east of Guntur town. A stone pillar at the foot of the steps, 1520, records the capture of Kondavidu in 1515. Another stone, 1538, records grants in the reign of Sadasiva Raya. The hill as svayambhu Narasimha is belief. The great raja-gopuram at the foot of the hill is not medieval: Vasireddy Venkatadri Nayudu built it in 1807–1809.
Motupalli
A medieval port on the old Guntur / Bapatla coast — today in Prakasam, still the sea-gate of this historic tract. Ganapatideva’s Abhaya-sasana of 1244–45 guarantees merchants security of cargo and fixed duties, and ends the seizing of wrecks. Marco Polo knew the place as Mutfili. Prataparudra inscribed here in 1322. The pillar still stands before the Virabhadra temple.
Guntur town
The name is older than the streets. Kumturu in 669; Gomturu / Gonturu in the tenth century; Gunturu; then Guntur. An ancient village; French district headquarters 1752–1759; British collectorate from 1788; municipality 1866. In 1901 it had 30,833 people, cotton presses, a railway, and a Lutheran college. From 1904 it was again a district headquarters. A college (1885; Andhra Christian College, 1928), a women’s hospital (1897), and a long political generation — Konda Venkatappayya among them — carried the town to 15 August 1947. Traditional folk meaning — gunta, gundu, kunta; Sanskrit Garthapuri — is beloved local speech, not a proved root.