Les meilleurs hôtels à Pune

Pune, in Maharashtra, is a city of musicality, intellectualism and activism, a place where the past is a present to the future. The city of 2.3 million, about 115 miles southeast of Bombay on the Deccan Plateau, is considered the home of North Indian Classical music, as well as a preeminent educational center. Pune is also known for the Hindu reformist movements it has traditionally fostered, and as a stronghold for the Independence Movement. Once the capital of the Maratha Empire, the city was captured by the British in 1818 during the battle of Kuregaon. The British renamed the city Poona, an alteration of its ancient name, Punaka, from Sanskrit root, "poo," meaning "to purify." After the British left, the city regained its variation of the earlier name. Tourists and history buffs put Pune's infamous, elegant Agha Khan Palace near the top of their must-see lists; Mahatma Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba, were imprisoned there by the British, along with other political prisoners. Kasturba died during the internment, and is honored with a memorial at the palace. The city is also famous for the plethora of temples in and around Pune, including the blackstone Shinde Chhatri, an 18th century Shiva temple; the Parvati Temple, overlooking the city, once used by Peshwa rulers as a private shrine; and the Qamarli Darvesh, a Muslim temple famous for its "levitating" stone. Perhaps the most surprising house of worship, Pune's 8th century Temple of Pateleshwar, was fashioned from a single, massive boulder.