Patiala is the largest of the eastern Malwa districts, with tehsils at Patiala, Rajpura, Samana, Nabha, Patran and Dudhansadhan.
It was the capital of the largest Sikh princely state and holds Qila Mubarak, Moti Bagh, the Sheesh Mahal and the Baradari gardens.
It holds Punjabi University, the National Institute of Sports, the Punjab State Archives, the Government Medical College, and the Patiala gharana of music.
It holds Samana, which Banda Singh Bahadur Ji took in November 1709 after Sonipat, and Nabha with its own state history and the Jaito connection.
Its agriculture is wheat and paddy on good land with a falling water table.
What is not recorded: the state's collections in any published catalogue, and the district's Powadhi-speaking eastern villages, whose dialect has never been surveyed on its own terms.
The state ran its own high court, its own currency and its own army, and the buildings all of that occupied are what the institutions of 1948 moved into. Government Mohindra College, founded in 1875, was among the earliest in this part of India. The town's whole civic fabric was built for a capital and is being used by a district headquarters.
The Powadh, the eastern part of the district around Rajpura and Banur, has its own dialect and its own history and is usually treated as an appendix to the Malwa.
Qila Mubarak at Patiala holds the Qila Androon with its painted rooms, the Darbar Hall and a large collection of arms and armour. The Sheesh Mahal holds the state's medal and order collection, some three thousand pieces, which is described as the largest of its kind anywhere. Restoration has run for years and parts of the complex remain closed.