Raigad

Front view of Raigad fort, From Paachad.

Raigad was the capital of Shivaji's kingdom. It is a hill fortress situated in the Raigad District of Maharashtra, India. It was constructed by Shivaji between 1657 and 1670. He was crowned King of Hindawi Swaraj, the formal name of what later developed into the Maratha Empire, here in 1674.

Shivaji had seized the site, then the fortress of Rairi, from the royal house of the Mores, a junior or Cadet dynasty descended from the Maurya imperial dynasty that once ruled large swathes of the subcontinent. The last More king ("Raja") was a feudatory of the Sultan of Bijapur. Shivaji renovated and expanded the Fortress of Rairi and renamed it Raigad, or the King's Fort, the name he gave it when he selected it for his capital when he was in the process of assuming the royal character.

Ruins of the Raigad fort, which served as a capital for Maratha Empire.