The Indian cities hold a great amount of history, art, architecture and are symbolic of amalgamation of these parameters. Every town or a city undergoes transformation at a different pace along the timeline and various factors are responsible in this. City of any scale and tier has its own historic fabric in various layers that has merged with its growing settlement. The prior identification and knowledge of these layers of history imbibed and interconnected in the city fabric has become a crucial point for a sustainable development. Over the time period of almost 200 years Bhopal has been subjected to six settlement patterns attributed to various rulers of the city and their different ideologies behind. This paper aims to understand the transformative aspect of Bhopal and its multiple settlement patterns that came along the timeline with a strong association to the water systems in the city. The study is explorative in nature and is a qualitative approach towards the settlement patterns, typology of structures and relative analysis with the hierarchical change along with the phase wise development of the city is studied in order to achieve the aim. By examining the case of Bhopal, the study focuses to create a practical approach to similar contexts.