Lalbagh Botanical Garden Watch Tower

Lalbagh’s watchtower, perched on a weathered granite knoll near the garden’s peninsular lake, is one of the four boundary towers traditionally attributed to Kempegowda I in the sixteenth century, predating the botanical garden that would later be laid out around it by roughly two centuries. It shares this distinction with towers at Kempambudhi, Mekhri Circle, and Ulsoor, together tracing the perimeter of Bengaluru’s earliest settlement.

The garden itself was begun by Hyder Ali in the 1760s as a private Mughal-style pleasure garden and was substantially expanded by his son Tipu Sultan, who imported plant species from across Asia via his contacts with French, Afghan, and other traders — an early instance of deliberate botanical exchange in the subcontinent. Under British rule Lalbagh was developed further into a public botanical garden with a resident horticulturist, and it remains one of India’s most important repositories of tropical and subtropical flora.

Getting there: The watch tower stands on the garden’s highest rocky outcrop, close to the West Gate and the Lalbagh Post Office.