Amritsar was founded in 1577 by Ram Das (Rām Dās), fourth Guru of the Sikhs, on a site granted by the Mughal emperor Akbar. Ram Das ordered the excavation of the sacred tank, or pool, called Amrita Saras (“Pool of Nectar”), from which the city's name is derived. A temple was erected on an island in the tank's centre by Arjun, the fifth Guru of the Sikhs. During the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1801–39), the upper part of the temple was decorated with a gold-foil-covered copper dome, and since then the building has been known as the Harimandir. Amritsar became the centre of the Sikh faith, and, as the centre of growing Sikh power, the city experienced a corresponding increase in trade. It was annexed to British India in 1849.

A short distance away from the Golden Temple is a spacious park, Jallianwalla Bagh, where on April 13, 1919, British colonial government troops fired on a crowd of unarmed Indian protesters, killing 379 of them and wounding many more. The site of the Amritsar Massacre (Amritsar, Massacre of), as this incident is now called, is a national monument. Another violent political clash took place in Amritsar in 1984, when troops of the Indian army attacked hundreds of Sikh separatists who had taken up positions in, and heavily fortified, the Golden Temple. Conflicting reports indicated that between 450 and 1,200 persons were killed before the Sikh extremists were evicted from the temple.

Amritsar is a centre for the textile and chemical industries and also engages in food milling and processing, silk weaving, tanning, canning, and the manufacture of machinery. The city lies on the main highway from Delhi to Lahore, Pak., and is a major rail hub. An airport is nearby. Amritsar is home to Guru Nanak Dev University, which was founded in 1969 as the leading educational centre of the Sikhs. Medical, dental, arts, and technical colleges are also located in Amritsar, and Khalsa College (1899) lies just outside the city. In the newer, northern section of the city is the Ram Bagh, a large, well-maintained park that contains the summer palace of Ranjit Singh. Pop. (2001) 966,862.