Once Maharshi was travelling by this wonderful place of the red soil region of Bolpur when he suddenly decided to stop and take a look at the serene place surrounded by Chhatim trees. The preacher of Bramho religion and a great philosopher himself, Devendranath decides to create an ashram there as the place he found to be ideal for meditation. Previously, the place was famed as Bhubandanga that was named after a local dacoit Bhuvan but later on it came under the zamindari of the Tagores. According to another source, it is said that previously the place belonged to Bhuvan Shinha which he later on passed to the Tagores to found the ashram there.

On 1863, Maharshi Devendranath Tagore founded Shantiniketan Ashram. Later on Rabindranath himself founded the Brahmo Vidyalaya school and later on in the year 1901 he established his dream the first open air school. By 1921, this school was expanded to form the famous Vishva Bharati University. This transformation happed few years after Tagore received the first non-European Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. By 1951, it became one of the best known Central Universities across India. The institute is proud of the alumni like Oscar winner Satyajit Ray, Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen, Gayatri Devi, Abdul Ghani Khan, and Indira Gandhi. Famous teachers like C.F. Andrews and Alex Aronson were once associated with this university.

Vishva Bharati is a completely residential university with separate colleges taking care of different disciplines including music, dance, drama, art and sculpture. The Kala-Bhavan, the art college of Shantiniketan which stands out to be one of the flagship institutes across the world to teach art.

Besides, the university is dedicated to patronize the local handicrafts and art to support the rural development as such. This instance is best found at the Sriniketan campus.