Some people experience numbers, letters, months or sounds as colours or shapes, a condition now called synaesthesia. In 1883 the polymath Francis Galton published one of the first colour plates of these visualisations, drawn from answers given by correspondents he called seers. He found the associations were highly personal, with no two people sharing the same colours, but that they were often hereditary and more common among women. The associations seemed to last only when people kept using them in their inner life.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.