The present study was aimed to estimate the urban sprawl in a historical city of India using series of satellite data between 1968 and 2005(37 years) and GIS. The total area of the Tiruchirappalli city was 1991.96 ha during 1968 and it was expanded into 4335.98 ha(117.67%) during 2005. The average growth rate per year was 63.35 ha. This 117.67% growth was at the cost of agriculture land(97.81%) and water body(2.19%). The satellite data used in this study were found to be good source of information for this kind of analysis and further studies are need to estimate the impact of this city expansion on agriculture yield and ground water.