Regarded as one of the seven holiest cities of Hindus, Mathura has a significantly rich history of over thousand years and is largely famous for being the birthplace of Lord Krishna, who was born to Devaki in an underground prison in Mathura but was brought up by his foster mother Yashoda in a nearby town called Vrindavan.

Devaki was a sister of Kansa, who belonged to the Bhoja Dynasty. During this time, Mathura was the capital of Surasena Kingdom, which Kansa took by force and thereafter made powerful alliances with Jarasandha of Magadha and others. Kansa was the maternal uncle of Lord Krishna, who along with his step brother Balarama eventually killed Kansa to relive the people of Mathura from his tyrannical rule and also to achieve a divine prophecy.

Later, Lord Krishna became the guide and charioteer of Arjuna, one of the five Pandava princes, during the epic battle of Mahabharta, fought in the 10th century BC, between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. The dialogue between Lord Kishna and his disciple Arjuna, which took place during Mahabharta, was later transformed into Bhagvad Gita which till date has been guiding people of the concept of Dharma and Karma and the methods of attaining liberation.

The battle of Mahabharta was followed by various successions and gradually the city came under the rule of the Mauryan Empire and the Sunga Dynasty. Thereafter, the control of the city passed briefly under the Indo-Greeks, the local rulers, the Indo-Scythians and the Kushan Dynasty.

The findings of historical artefacts such as the ancient stone inscription in Maghera, a town 17 km from Mathura endorses the details of this particular era of Mathura. The inscription had lines written in Brahmi script. Likewise, the Mathura Lion Capital inscription endorses the fall of Mathura under the control of Sakas.

The Indo-Scythians (also known as Sakas or Shakas) conquered the area of Mathura over Indian Kings around 60 BC. As opposed to the “Western Satraps” ruling in Gujarat and Malwa, the Indo-Scythian satraps of Mathura are sometimes called the “Nothern Satraps”. Several successors are known to have ruled as vassals to the Kushans, after Rajuvula, such as the “Great Satrap” Kharapallana and the “Satrap” Vanaspara, who were known from as inscription discovered in Sarnath, and dated to the 3rd year of Kanishka, in which they were playing allegiance to the Kushans.

From 1st to the 3rd centuries, Mathura served as one of the capitals of Kushana Empire. It was during the reign of Kushanas that Mathura got acknowledged for a peculiar form of art and culture which is currently recognized by the historians as the Mathura School of Art. The city evolved into a popular learning centre and was visited by Vardhamana Mahavira, the last Jain Thirthankara, and Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, who promoted and spread their ideas amongst the city’s educated population.

Many Buddhist monuments, statues and sculptures etc were built during this period. Mathura museum houses several such statues and sculptures, mostly ordered by Kanishka – the famous Kushana ruler and his successors. For several centuries, Buddhism and Jainism continued to flourish in and around Mathura.

Fa Xian (Fa-Hsien), who visited India during the reign of Chandragupta II, endorsed the city as a centre of Buddhism with more than 3000 Buddhist Monks and also witnessed Six Stupas erected in the honour of some famous Buddhist monks. While his successor Xuanzang (Hieun Tsiang), who visited during the reign of Harshvardhana i.e. two hundred years, witnessed both Buddhism and Hinduism flourishing in Mathura wherein he noted five large Hindu Brahmanical Temples, twenty Buddhist monasteries and a good number of Buddhist Stupas at Mathura.

These Hindu temples in Mathura at this time had deities made of pure gold; their eyes were made of diamonds and all of them were richly decorated with jewelleries. These gold laden temples were looked upon by Muslim invaders as an opportunity to accumulate wealth and deprive the city of its native religions. With these intentions, the first to invade the city was Mahmud Ghazni. He invaded the city in 1018 and stole all the riches of these deities and destroyed the temples. Ghazni left behind him a trail of plunder and destruction.

The city was again hit by Sikandar Lodhi, who earned the epitaph of ‘Butt Shikan’, the destroyer of Hindu Deities and thereafter by Aurangzeb, who reversed the religious policies of his grandfather Akbar, who tried to restore the city.

Aurangzeb’s religious intolerance and fanatic zeal was such that he not only ordered for the destruction of several Hindu temples at Mathura and Varanasi but also built a Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), which is said to have been built over the famous Keshav Deo Temple near the birthplace of Krishna. It is said that the material of the said temple was used to build the mosque, which even stands today.

After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, few Rajput rulers tried to restore the normalcy in the affected region, including the land of Braj, and introduced several reforms within Hinduism and even abolished Jizya, a religious tax imposed by Aurangzeb.

After Mahmud Ghazni and Sikandar Lodi, Mathura witnessed yet another destructive invasion by Ahmad Shah Abdali wherein he robbed the cities of Mathura and Vrindavan and returned with huge amount of wealth and many thousands of captives. Thereafter, with the decline of the Mughal Empire, the Marathas rose to power and were succeeded by the British who in 1830 established a cantonment at Mathura. Thereafter, the city gradually regained its glory and became a popular pilgrimage.

Many new temples were built at Mathura and Vrindavan, including the Dwarkadeesh temple, which is a huge temple of Lord Krishna, built in 1815 just a few metres away from what is believed to be the actual birthplace of Krishna, adjoining the mosque that was raised during the reign of Aurganzeb. Some of the important temples located at Mathura include the Katra Kesha Dev temple, Jama Masjid (built on the ruins of the Keshav Deo temple destroyed under the instructions of Aurangazeb), Gita Mandir (having walls inscribed with the verses of entire Bhagavadgita), Dwarkadheesh Temple (main temple of Mathura), Sati Burj Temple, etc.

Mathura is also famous for ghats frequently visited by devotees, namely the Ganesh Ghat, the Dashashwamedh Ghat, the Saraswati Sangam Ghat, the Chakrateertha Ghat, the Krishnaganga Ghat, the Somatirth or Swami Ghat, the Ghantagharan Ghat, the Dharapattan Ghat, the Vaikuntha Ghat, the Navteertha or Varahkshetra Ghat, the Asikunda Ghat, the Prayag Ghat, the Manikarnika Ghat and many more.

While Mathura overwhelms the tourists visiting the city with its rich culture and history, Vrindavan, on the other hand enriches them with the divine experience of being introduced with the youthful days that Lord Krishna had spent here in the company of cattle, maidens and cowherds.

Like Mathura, the town of Vrindavan houses a number of Temples and other sacred sites, such as: the Madan Mohan Temple (oldest temple in Vrindavan and associated with the saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu), the Radha Vallabh Temple, the Banke-Bihari Temple (most popular shrine at Vrindavan), Sri Radha Raman Mandir (constructed around 1542), the Rangaji Temple, the Jaipur Temple (built by Sawai Madho Singh II of Jaipur in 1917), the Govind Deo Temple (built in 1590 by Akbar’s general Raja Man Singh; destroyed by Aurangzeb), the Radha Damodar Mandir (established in 1542), the Shahji Temple (having twelve spiral columns, built in 1876; known for Belgian glass chandeliers and fine paintings) and the famous Sri Krishna-Balrama Temple built by the ISKCON.