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Francis Day obtained a land grant here in 1639 from the Nayaka rulers and the British built Fort St. George in 1640, the first major English fortified settlement in India. The fort still stands on the seafront, now housing the Tamil Nadu state legislature and a museum with the flag that flew over it on Indian independence day in 1947. Around the fort grew a city that served as the British administrative center for South India for nearly three centuries, and the colonial-era buildings of George Town, some in Art Deco from the 1930s, fill the historic commercial district with a specific dense urban character.

Mylapore, which predates British arrival by centuries, contains the Kapaleeshwarar Temple, a Dravidian structure with its towering painted gopuram (gate pyramid) of the 6th-8th centuries, and the Parthasarathy Temple in neighboring Triplicane.

These are not museum pieces: both temples are active centers of worship with daily rituals and festival calendars. Walking through Mylapore's lanes among the flower sellers, the brass shops, and the silk merchants gives you the texture of Tamil urban commerce that has been continuous for a very long time.