Kozhikode also known as Calicut is the third largest city in the southern state of Kerala in India. It is the headquarters of Kozhikode district, and was formerly the capital of an independent kingdom,andlater of the erstwhile Malabar District. This city is famous as the place where Vasco da Gama, the first European to sail directly from Europe (from Lisbon, Portugal) to India, landed in 1498.
Calicut is the anglicised form of ‘Kalikut’, Arabic for the Malayalam name Kozhikode. According to the historian K.V. Krishnan Iyer, the term means koyil (palace) kodu (fortified).
