Chennai

Chennai, once known as Madras until 1996, perches on the southeastern rim of India, where the Coromandel Coast meets the Bay of Bengal. Its municipal corporation, established in 1688, predates every Indian city authority and stands only behind London in age. Over centuries it has grown from a modest fishing settlement—Madrasapattinam—to the capital and sprawling urban heart of Tamil Nadu. Today the city and its suburbs form a metropolitan agglomeration that ranks among the world’s thirty-five largest by population and supports one of India’s most varied local economies.

A succession of South Indian dynasties—the Chola, Pandya, Pallava and Vijayanagara—once held sway over this shore. In the seventeenth century the Nayak ruler Chennapa Nayaka transferred the coastal village to the British East India Company, which erected Fort St. George, the first English stronghold in India. In time the port town served as winter seat for the Madras Presidency under the British Raj. After independence in 1947, Madras remained the capital of the reorganized Madras State and, since the state was renamed Tamil Nadu in 1969, of its modern successor. The legislation of 1996 returned the city to its earlier Tamil name, Chennai.

Within the 174 km² of its original boundaries lay 4.65 million residents according to the 2011 census; after expansion to 426 km², the Greater Chennai Corporation encompassed 6.75 million inhabitants. Migrants continue to arrive: as of 2001, nearly a third of newcomers came from elsewhere in India and a smaller fraction from overseas. Many dwell at or beneath the poverty threshold—roughly 40 per cent of families—and more than 300,000 households occupy over a thousand informal settlements. Tamil remains the lingua franca, spoken by almost 80 per cent of the populace; other Indian tongues such as Telugu, Urdu, Hindi and Malayalam follow, alongside varieties of English in professional circles and several expatriate languages. Hinduism commands a clear majority, with Muslim and Christian communities forming notable minorities, while scores of other faiths maintain their own places of worship.

Chennai stands at the junction of past and present in its economic profile. Its two ports and international airport link it to global commerce; an estimated GDP of US $143.9 billion (March 2023) places its metropolitan output among India’s highest. The city’s industrial base spans automobile manufacturing—earning the sobriquet “Detroit of India”—software and hardware services, healthcare and financial services. A leader in medical tourism, Chennai attracts patients from across Asia and beyond, its hospitals and clinics collectively dubbed the nation’s health capital. Exports, too, exceed national district averages, surpassing US $256.3 billion in recent years.

Architectural legacies rise in chronological layers. Earliest structures date to the sixth through eighth centuries CE: the Kapaleeshwarar Temple at Mylapore and Triplicane’s Parthasarathy Temple exemplify Dravidian design, with their richly carved mantapas and soaring gopurams set within quadrangular precincts. Traditional row dwellings, or Agraharams, still edge temple grounds. Medieval and colonial eras introduced a synthesis of styles: Islamic motifs and Gothic revival details merged in the Indo-Saracenic idiom. Paul Benfield’s Chepauk Palace, Fort St. George, Amir Mahal and the Victoria Public Hall bear witness to this phase; the Madras High Court and Ripon Building complete its roster. Around the turn of the twentieth century, art deco appeared in George Town’s United India and Burma Shell edifices, while Modernist impulses surfaced after 1947 in concrete-frame structures such as the LIC headquarters.

Building heights remained modest—no taller than 60 metres—within ten kilometres of Chennai Port until 2009, owing to aviation radar constraints. The central business district thus spread outward rather than upward. Peripheral zones have since risen more boldly, with the tallest towers reaching 161 metres.

Chennai cuisine anchors itself in rice and local spices, often served on banana leaves in age-old style. Idly and dosa preside over breakfast; street-food stalls offer fried snacks and regional specialties. Urban growth has brought eateries serving North Indian, Chinese and continental dishes, as well as Japanese and Korean fare for expatriate communities. In 2015 National Geographic listed Chennai among its “Top 10 food cities,” and in 2018 a survey rated it India’s most vegan-friendly metropolis.

Transport networks fan out from the core. Chennai International Airport at Tirusulam ranks fourth in India for passenger and freight traffic; plans for a greenfield facility await approval. The city lies at a hub of Southern Air Command operations, with air bases at Tambaram, Arakkonam and Chennai serving the Air Force and Navy. Railways began here: a 1837 line linked Little Mount to Chintadripet, and by 1856 tracks ran to Arcot. Southern Railway, headquartered in Chennai since 1951, oversees four major stations—Central, Egmore, Beach and Tambaram—with Central among India’s busiest. The Chennai Metro, inaugurated in 2015, spans two lines and 54 kilometres, with three more lines planned to extend another 116 kilometres.

Road arteries total some 1,780 kilometres, intersecting national highways that connect Chennai to Mumbai and Kolkata, among other destinations. Two ring roads encircle the city, while expressways to Maduravoyal and Bangalore remain under construction. Over six million vehicles bear local registrations. The Metropolitan Transport Corporation runs over 3,200 buses within city limits, and the State Express Transport Corporation links Chennai to neighbouring states via long-distance coaches. The Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus, one of Asia’s largest, handles outstation traffic; auto-rickshaws, taxis and app-based services fill gaps elsewhere.

Along its shoreline and within its parks, Chennai offers leisure amid its urban sprawl. The Marina Beach stretches thirteen kilometres, making it the world’s second-longest city beachfront; Elliot’s Beach lies near the Adyar estuary. Over eight hundred public parks dot the metropolis, the largest being the 358-acre Tholkappia Poonga designed to rehabilitate mangrove wetlands. Thematic gardens, snake parks, zoos and botanical reserves augment green space: Guindy National Park, Madras Crocodile Bank and Arignar Anna Zoological Park draw millions of visitors each year.

Cultural life thrives in performance and film. “Kollywood,” Chennai’s Tamil-language cinema, produces hundreds of features annually. More than 120 cinema screens and multiplexes operate in the city, while stage theatres present dramas in diverse tongues. For shopping and socializing, glitzy malls and jewellery emporia occupy neighbourhoods such as Anna Nagar and Nungambakkam, some of India’s priciest retail thoroughfares.

Music and dance remain intertwined with Chennai’s identity. Carnatic tradition, refined over centuries, rests on the teachings of fifteenth-century composer Purandara Dasa and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Trinity—Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri. Their kritis form the core repertoire at the Chennai Music Season, held from mid-December to mid-January across auditoriums, temples and colonial bungalows. Over two thousand artists perform more than three hundred concerts featuring vocal and instrumental recitals, percussion solos and classical dance pieces. Instruments range from the veena and flute to the nagaswaram, mridangam and ghatam. The city’s Tamil film music sector also contributes to the local soundscape, reflecting evolving tastes and technologies.

Classical Bharatanatyam dance remains closely associated with Chennai. Dancers assume the araimandi stance—a half-seated posture embodying geometric harmony between head, torso and limbs—and render narratives drawn from myth and devotional poetry. The art form emphasizes precise alignment, expressive gestures and rhythmic footwork, with intricate kostumes that include the sari or specialised stitched ensembles.

Clothing customs evoke local philosophy: the sari, an unstitched wrap highlighting the wearer’s form, and the dhoti or lungi for men, perform both practical and symbolic functions. Wrapped artfully, these garments connect body and environment in a manner that Chennai’s artisans continue to refine.

Tourism underscores Chennai’s position as a gateway to southern India. The city hosts over eleven million domestic and 630,000 foreign visitors annually, who venture onward to nearby sites such as Mahabalipuram’s UNESCO-listed monuments, the temple city of Kanchipuram, the ashrams of Pondicherry and the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary. Hospitality infrastructure has expanded to meet demand, with some 7,000 luxury rooms catering primarily to business travellers.

Chennai’s fabric entwines centuries of temple carvings and colonial façades with the bustle of modern commerce. Its economy pulses through ports and factories, hospitals and studios, while its streets hum with the clang of automobile assembly lines and the strains of flute and veena. In every neighborhood—from the quiet lanes of Mylapore to the high-rise edges of OMR—layers of history and community life converge. Chennai’s story persists in its rhythms of ritual and trade, its measured evolution of skyline and culture, and its inhabitants’ daily weaving of past and present into an enduring urban tapestry.