Varanasi is a cultural centre of northern India that has been closely associated with the Ganges. Silk weaving, carpets and crafts and tourism employ a significant number of the local population, as do the Banaras Locomotive Works and Bharat Heavy Electricals. The city has a syncretic tradition of Muslim artisanship that underpins its tourism. Under the Treaty of Faizabad, the East India Company acquired Benares in 1775, the city later successively becoming a part of the Benares Division in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces, the North-Western Provinces, and the United Provinces, and after India's independence of Uttar Pradesh. In the 16th century, Rajput nobles in the service of the courts and armies of the Mughal emperor Akbar, sponsored the building or further enhancement of the major Shiva temple in the city they also built other temples, all displaying an empire-wide architectural style. Several other major figures of the Bhakti movement were born in Varanasi, including Kabir and Ravidas. Tulsidas wrote his Awadhi language epic, the Ramcharitmanas, a Bhakti movement reworking of the Sanskrit Ramayana, in Varanasi. Since ancient times, the city has been an important centre of Hindu devotion, pilgrimage, mysticism and poetry contributing to its cultural importance. In the 8th century, Adi Shankara established the worship of Shiva as an official sect of Varanasi. The Buddha is recorded in the Pali canon to have given his first sermon, ' The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dharma', at nearby Sarnath in 528 BCE. Kashi, its ancient name, was associated with a kingdom of the same name of 2,500 years ago. Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. It is 692 kilometres (430 mi) to the southeast of India's capital New Delhi, 320 kilometres (200 mi) south-east of the state capital, Lucknow, and 121 kilometres (75 mi) east of Prayagraj, another Hindu pilgrimage site. Located in the middle-Ganges valley in the southeastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi lies on the left bank of the river.

The name Varanasi was officially so revived after 1947, but the city is still widely known by its earlier name Banaras or Benares ( Banāras ( listen)), and its ancient name Kashi. Varanasi ( Vārāṇasī ) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world, even as the traditions are transformed in the face of modernization, generational changes and emigration.

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