To give a sense of the city's size, the visitor from Portugal compare…

A class in Hosapete is preparing an exhibition on how historians know about the city of Vijayanagara. One group studies stone records left by the kings and their chiefs, found at many sites across the region. Another group reads the account of a sixteenth-century visitor from Portugal who climbed a hill to look over the city but could not see all of it. They plan a short panel for each kind of source.

To give a sense of the city's size, the visitor from Portugal compared what he saw with which city?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: option 1

The correct answer is Option (1) → Rome

Option (1) Rome — Correct. Domingo Paes wrote that the part he saw seemed to him as large as Rome. He could not see the whole city, as it lay between ranges of hills.

Option (2) Lisbon — Incorrect. Lisbon was the capital of Portugal, Paes's home. Yet he chose Rome for the comparison.

Option (3) Venice — Incorrect. Venice was a great Italian trading city. Paes chose Rome instead.

Option (4) Constantinople — Incorrect. Constantinople was a famous large city of the time, but Paes chose Rome.

NCERT (2026-27): “3. Vijayanagara …
Several travellers visited the city and wrote about it. Notable among their accounts are those of an Italian trader named Nicolo de Conti, an ambassador named Abdur Razzaq sent by the ruler of Persia, a merchant named Afanasii Nikitin from Russia, all of whom visited the city in the fifteenth century, and those of Duarte Barbosa, Domingo Paes and Fernao Nuniz from Portugal, who came in the sixteenth century.”

“This is an excerpt from Domingo Paes’s description of Vijayanagara: The size of this city I do not write here, because it cannot all be seen from any one spot, but I climbed a hill whence I could see a great part of it; I could not see it all because it lies between several ranges of hills. What I saw from thence seemed to me as large as Rome, and very beautiful to the sight; there are many groves of trees within it, in the gardens of the houses, and many conduits of water which flow into the midst of it, and in places there are lakes; and the king has close to his palace a palm-grove and other rich fruit-bearing trees.”