The best examples of temple building in the sixteenth-century heyday of Vijayanagara are found in the northern section of Hampi, the sacred centre along the riverside. As a ritual or ceremonial centre, the city was a greatly enlarged, yet unified, version of the Chalukyan royal centres of Aihole and Pattadakal, according to the descriptions and poetry of contemporaries and to what can be beheld by the modern sojourner at Hampi. Vijayanagara was also an important commercial centre. This chapter explores the history of the Vijayanagara kingdom and its political structure. The most powerful Vijayanagara rulers of the sixteenth century, Krishnadevaraya, Achyutadevaraya and Rama Raja, enjoyed only a part of the revenues collected from the richest provinces of the realm. Krishnadevaraya gave both major responsibilities and privileges in Tamil country, and both were ultimately to rise against their Vijayanagara masters, Nagama against Krishnadevaraya and Chellappa against Achyutadevaraya.