The city is in the Puducherry district on the southeast coast of India and is surrounded by the Bay of Bengal to the east and the state of Tamil Nadu, with which it shares most of its culture, heritage, and language.

The colonial period began with the Portuguese, the first Europeans to conduct trade in textiles, in 1521, and subsequently, the Dutch and the Danes in the 17th century.

This Anglo-French war continued until 1814, where France found itself in control of the settlements of Puducherry, Mahé, Yanam, Karaikal, and Chandernagor, even during the British period, until 1954.

[4] Poduca has been identified as possibly being Arikamedu (now part of Ariyankuppam), located about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the modern city of Pondicherry.

The French governor François Martin made remarkable improvements to the city and its commercial ties, facing at the same time strong opposition from the Dutch and the English.

The governor of Dutch Coromandel, Laurens Pit the Younger, sailed with a fleet of seventeen ships and 1,600 men from Nagapattinam and bombarded Pondicherry for two weeks, after which Francois Martin surrendered it.

At the Peace of Ryswick, it was agreed by all parties to return conquered territories, and in 1699, Pondicherry was handed back to the French.

[6] On 16 January 1761, the British captured Pondicherry from the French, but it was returned under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, at the conclusion of the Seven Years' War.

[7] The British took control of the area again in 1793, at the Siege of Pondicherry, amid the Wars of the French Revolution, and returned it to France in 1814.

These municipalities represented roughly 90% of the population of the French possessions, and they called upon the government of France to take urgent and necessary measures to give effect to the wishes of the people.

Their suggestion was that a de facto transfer of the administration should take place immediately, while French sovereignty should continue until the constitutional issue had been settled.

Whilst there was an early seawall made by the French government in 1735, this was not "hard structure coastal defence" so much as an adjunct to the old shipping pier and a transition from the beach to the city.

[10] Today, the seawall consists of rows of granite boulders reinforced every year in an attempt to stop erosion.

As a consequence of the seawall, there is severe seabed erosion and turbulence at the coastal margin, resulting in an extreme loss of biodiversity within the critical intertidal zone.

Pondicherry's seawall has also caused beach erosion to migrate further up the coast, to the fishing villages in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu to the north of the city.

In 2016, the Pondicherry State Government Employees Central Federation presented a status paper on the fiscal and social crisis in Puducherry to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The report stated that a "combination of a staggering debt, stagnant tax revenues and rampant misappropriation of funds has throttled the economy of the Union Territory" and called for measures on a war footing to "deliver good governance and end corruption".

[24] The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation operates air-conditioned bus services from Chennai to Pondicherry.

[25] Pondicherry is connected by train to all major Indian cities, such as Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata (Howrah), Mumbai, Kanyakumari, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Visakhapatnam, and Mangalore.

[30] The breakwater to the harbour and other hard structures constructed on the shore caused extreme coastal erosion, and the sand from Pondicherry's Promenade Beach has disappeared entirely.

An enormous deposition of sand has accrued to the south of the harbour breakwater, but this is not a large beach and is not easily accessible from the city.

[35] Sengazhuneer Amman at Veerampattinam village is one of the oldest temples in Pondicherry, situated about 7 km (4.3 mi) away from the city centre.

Pondicherry struggles with a high poverty rate, inadequate road maintenance, lack of sewage infrastructure, untidy beaches, air pollution, and sex crimes.