Place:Nagercoil, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India

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Nagercoil ("Temple of the Nāgas", Nagaraja- Hindu Temple) is a city and administrative headquarters of Kanyakumari District in Tamil Nadu, India. Situated close to the tip of the Indian peninsula, it lies on an undulating terrain between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. Nagercoil Corporation is the 12th biggest city of Tamil Nadu.

The present city of Nagercoil grew around Kottar, a mercantile town that dates back to the Sangam period. Kottar is now a locality within the city limits. For 735 years it was a central part of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom and later Kerala State, till almost a decade after India's independence from Britain in 1947. In 1956, Kanyakumari District, along with the town, was merged with Tamil Nadu.

With a maturing Technology startup ecosystem, the city is one of the 50 Indian cities to be ranked in the World Startup Index of 1,000 cities. Nagercoil is a centre for a range of economic activities in the small but densely-populated Kanyakumari District. Economic activities in around the city include tourism, wind energy, IT services, marine fish production and exports, rubber and cloves plantations, agro-crops, floral production, manufacture of fishnets, rubber products among other activities.

‘Nagercoil Cloves’ is a distinct quality of dried cloves in the spices market, noted for its aroma and medicinal value. Cloves, pepper and other spices are grown in estates in the Western Ghats, outside the town.

Nagercoil is also the nearest city to the ISRO Propulsion Complex, Mahendragiri and the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.

The city, along with the district of Kanyakumari, stands at the top in many HDI parameters in Tamil Nadu state, including education, per capita income, health indices, etc.

The municipality of Nagercoil was upgraded as a Municipal corporation on the eve of its 100th year as a city on February 14, 2019.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Nagercoil derives from the Tamil expression Nagaraja koyil, meaning "temple of Nagas".

Robert Caldwell describes the extent of Malayalam in the mid 19th century as extending from the vicinity of Mangalore in the north where it supersedes with Tulu and Kannada to Kottar beyond Pahrali River near Kanyakumari in the south where it begins to supersede with the Tamil and from Malabar Coast in the west to Western Ghats in the east besides the inhabited islands of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea. It was from the ancient trade centre of Kottar from where the city of Nagercoil began to expand.

Known as the Granary of Travancore, Nagercoil not only served as the food basket of Kerala, but was also one among the important spice-trading centers in the kingdom of Travancore from the 14th century onward, and maintained a trade network with Arab merchants from the pre-Islamic era. Various Tamil and Kerala kings fought over this rich agricultural land, which boasted six rivers. Various historians cite that the land's climate and diverse, luxuriant vegetation had no comparison anywhere else in Tamil Nadu.

The naturalist Jivanayakam Cyril Daniel (1927–2011) was born in Nagercoil.

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