The camera obscura, Latin for dark chamber, is a darkened space with a small hole that projects reversed images of the outside world onto the opposite wall. Aristotle reportedly noticed the effect in the light through a tree during an eclipse, and by the early modern period it had become a room-sized tool. Johannes Kepler, who coined the name, used a portable tent-like version in the 1620s to trace landscapes, while Robert Boyle described a handheld model in 1669 that revealed new scenes with every turn. Artists used it to learn perspective, and wealthy amateurs such as Alexander Pope turned their grottoes into projection rooms. Giambattista della Porta described the experience as seeing the outside world inverted and strange, like a dream. The device links the optics of the eye to the origins of photography, which later fixed these images on paper.

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.