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The site where Mysore Palace now stands was occupied by a village named Puragere at the beginning of the 16th century. 281  The Mahishūru Fort was constructed in 1524 by Chamaraja Wodeyar  1513–1553, 257  who passed on the dominion of Puragere to his son Chamaraja Wodeyar  1572–1576. Since the 16th century, the name of Mayashūru has commonly been used to denote the city. 31  The Kingdom of Mysore, governed by the Wodeyar family, initially served as a vassal state of the Vijayanagara Empire. With the decline of that empire after the Battle of Talikota in 1565, the Mysore Kingdom gradually achieved independence, and by the time of King Narasaraja Wodeyar 1637, it had become a sovereign state. 228  Seringapatam, near Mysore, the present-day Srirangapatna, was the capital of the kingdom beginning in 1610. 257  The 17th century saw a steady expansion of its territory and, under Narasaraja Wodeyar I and Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar, the kingdom annexed large areas of what is now southern Karnataka and parts of Tamil Nadu, to become a powerful state in the southern Deccan.

The kingdom reached the height of its military power and dominion in the latter half of the 18th century, under the de facto rulers Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. The latter demolished parts of Mysore to remove legacies of the Wodeyar dynasty. 257  During this time, the kingdom of Mysore came into conflict with the Marathas, the British, and the Nizam of Hyderabad, leading to the four Anglo-Mysore wars, success in the first two of which was followed by defeat in the third and fourth. After Tipu Sultan's death in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in 1799, the capital of the kingdom was moved back to Mysore from Seringapatam, 249  and the kingdom was distributed by the British to their allies of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War. Part of the kingdom was annexed into the Madras Presidency, another to the Nizam of Hyderabad. The landlocked interior of the defeated kingdom of Mysore was turned into a princely state under the suzerainty of the British Crown, 249  with the five-year-old Wodeyar Krishnaraja  as titular ruler and with Purnaiah, who had served under Tipu, as chief minister or diwan and Lt. Col. Barry Close as Resident. The British took control of Mysore's foreign policy and insisted on an annual tribute for maintaining a standing British army at Mysore. Purnaiah is credited with improving Mysore's public works. In 1831, claiming there was maladministration, the British took direct control of the princely state. For the next fifty years, the kingdom of Mysore was under the direct rule of British Commissioners, and in 1831 the city of Mysore lost its status as the administrative centre, when the British Commissioner moved the capital to Bangalore. 251 

In 1876–77, towards the end of the period of direct British rule, Mysore suffered from the Great Famine of 1876–1878, in which nearly a fifth of the population died. In 1881, Maharaja Chamaraja Wadiyar X was given control of Mysore, in a process called rendition, but with a resident British officer and a diwan to handle the Maharaja's administration, and the city of Mysore regained its status as the capital. 254  The Mysore municipality was established in 1888 and the city was divided into eight wards. 283  In 1897 an outbreak of bubonic plague killed nearly half of the population of the city. With the establishment of the City Improvement Trust Board CITB in 1903, Mysore became one of the first cities in Asia to undertake planned urban development. Public demonstrations and meetings were held there during the Quit India movement and other phases of the Indian independence movement.