Fort St. George

Fort St. George was completed in 1644 on a strip of beach the East India Company had purchased from the local Nayak chief Damarla Venkatadri three years earlier. It was the first permanent English settlement in India and the nucleus from which Madras (now Chennai) grew — the Company's gunsmiths, traders, and clerks lived inside the walls, while the surrounding 'Black Town' served as the native quarter. The fort still functions: it houses the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly and Secretariat, with active government offices that visitors must avoid. Within the public area sits St. Mary's Church (consecrated 1680, the oldest Anglican church east of Suez and where Robert Clive and Elihu Yale were both married), the Fort Museum (East India Company arms, coins, uniforms, and Daniell-school paintings of 18th-century Madras), and the 45-metre flagstaff said to be a single teak pole erected in 1687. The museum is small but unusually well-curated. Allow two hours for the museum and church together. The fort is closed on Fridays.