Lalbagh Botanical Garden

Lalbagh is a botanical garden of about 240 acres in the middle of Bengaluru and one of the main reasons the city was once called India's Garden City. Hyder Ali commissioned it in 1760 and his son Tipu Sultan developed it, bringing in flowering plants from abroad. Today it holds more than 1,800 plant species, many trees over a century old, and a good number of resident birds; a full visit takes three to four hours.

The Glasshouse hosts flower shows each year around Independence Day and Republic Day. Other sights are a floral clock seven metres across, ringed by Snow White and Seven Dwarfs figures, a hibiscus garden with over seventy varieties, and a 40-acre lake that waters the grounds. Lalbagh Rock, an outcrop of Peninsular Gneiss about 3,000 million years old, is protected as a National Geological Monument and carries one of the four boundary towers raised by Kempegowda I, the city's founder.