In the heart of the city lies and ancient monument made during the Rashtrakuta period is a rather controversial if it was made by a Rashtrakuta king or one of his vassals. Also, the reason why Pataleshwar was made is also very much argued upon. But, the story we stumbled upon was quite interesting.
It is believed that lord Shiv appeared in the dreams of a Rashtrakuta king and guided him to a land of ‘Punya’ i.e., good deeds and showed him a way towards the shiv-linga in the land of good deeds. When the king followed this dream in the search of the Shiv-linga he saw in the dreams, he came to this very city and established the stone temple of Pataleshwar and since it was a land of Punya, he named the area around the temple as “Punyaka” which later came to be known as Pune.