Osmania University: Epic in Granite

360° Panoramic Views 1

This floor has four balconies, all with parapets forming a huge square making the foyer look like a well. “The arcades around the open courtyard, the ornate parapets of the first floor, all of the same dimensions and of Moorish variety give a mirror like effect, again a characteristic of medieval Islamic architecture,” says Sharma who has made a deep study of the Arts College architecture.

Another distinction of the architects and planners of the Arts College building is that all the pink shade granite stone used to build the great building came from quarries within the campus area. Equally beautiful are the Library and Engineering College buildings, less ornate, less baroque and less complex and yet imposing and striking. The Library building is built on what is known as Senate Hall hill because originally the architects planned to build the Senate Hall here. Visitors can take time off from their tour of granite structures and relax in the aesthetically laid out Landscape Gardens, which often is rendezvous for adolescent romance.

Next to the three presidency universities and Delhi University, Osmania is the largest university in the country with ten faculties, 52 departments, 500 plus campus constituent or affiliated colleges offering courses at all levels ranging from the diploma, degree to the doctoral and the post-doctoral. It has 1,500 teachers on its rolls and around three lakh students, 300 among them being foreigners. Osmania started off as the first university in the country where the teaching medium is not English, but an Indian language (Urdu). Another distinction of Osmania is its Astronomy department and more especially of its observatory of international standards which again is the second largest observatory in the country.

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