Vardhangad Fort

Vardhangad Fort crowns a round-topped hill on the Mahadev range, on the line between Koregaon and Khatav talukas, some seven miles from Koregaon and nine from Satara, both to its south-west. Shivaji began building it in 1673 and finished it the following year as an outpost guarding the eastern edge of his new territory. It was besieged by Mahadji Shinde's army in 1800 and by Fattesingh Mane in 1805, passed to Bapu Gokhale in 1807 and to the Peshwa in 1811, and appears to have surrendered in 1818.

The climb from Vardhangad village takes only 15 to 20 minutes, with an image of Maruti halfway up that local legend credits with curing snakebite. The single gate on the south side still shows the mark of a cannon shot from 1805. Inside the roughly twenty-acre enclosure are a Mahadev temple beside a banyan tree, ponds, and the Vardhinidevi temple with a dipmal and a Parashuram idol, where a fair is held every Dasara.