— — a city older than its empires.
“On the south bank of the Ganges where four rivers meet, where Chandragupta held court and the boy Guru Gobind Singh was born. Pataliputra became Patna became this city of more than two million, with the beehive curve of the Golghar above the riverbank and the marble dome of Takht Sri Patna Sahib in the old town. The river runs wide here, brown and slow toward the sea.
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Patna is the capital of Bihar and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the subcontinent. It sits on the south bank of the Ganges in north-east India, near the confluences with the Son, the Gandak, and the Punpun. Ajatashatru of Magadha founded a fort here called Pataligrama in roughly 490 BCE; under Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka it became Pataliputra, the seat of an empire that stretched from Bengal to the Hindu Kush. About 2.5 million people live in the present city.
The Golghar, a thirty-metre beehive of stone above the riverbank, was completed in 1786 by Captain John Garstin of the East India Company as a famine granary after the 1770 catastrophe in Bengal. It was never filled. A pair of staircases winds opposite ways up its outer skin so porters climbing with grain would not collide with porters descending empty. A short distance east, the white marble dome of Takht Sri Patna Sahib marks the 1666 birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru.
Most visitors arrive at Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport, ten kilometres west of the centre, or by the New Delhi-Howrah trunk line at Patna Junction. The Golghar is open dawn to dusk with a small entry fee and an outdoor climb in any weather. Takht Sri Patna Sahib welcomes pilgrims and visitors at all hours; heads must be covered and shoes left at the gate. October through February, after the monsoon withdraws, is the dry season when the Ganges runs lowest and the air clears.