The town is situated close to the tip of the Indian peninsula, locked with the Western Ghats on all sides. The town was a part of the erstwhile Travancore state, or later Travancore-Cochin state, till almost a decade after the Indian independence in 1947. It is the best-managed municipality in the state with a functinal e-governance system and the best city planned and citizen oriented corporarion
in the state, given its large population of Non-Resident Indians. In 1956, the city and the District were merged with Tamil Nadu. In its earlier days, the town and its surroundings were known as Nanjilnadu. It also serves as the Headquarters for Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, an Space research arm of The Government of India. The public sector Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL) also has its largest facility at Manavaalakurichy, near the town, which pioneers in the mining, processing and production of Thorium As of 2011, the town had a population of 224,849.
