The school followed "the ancient Indian tradition of the gurukul".

Santiniketan, in a rural part of West Bengal, is closely tied to the life and ideas of Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, artist, musician and philosopher who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

The place began as an ashram, set up and given its name in 1863 by Tagore's father, Debendranath Tagore. In 1901, Rabindranath began to turn it into a residential school and a centre for the arts, based on the ancient Indian tradition of the gurukul, in which pupils live and learn with their teachers. His vision was of the unity of humanity, reaching beyond religious and cultural boundaries. In 1921 a "world university" was founded there, named Visva Bharati after that vision.

Santiniketan's buildings are as unusual as its ideas. Instead of following the British colonial style of the early twentieth century, or the modern style then spreading from Europe, they drew on ancient, medieval and folk traditions from across Asia.

In September 2023, Santiniketan was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List at a meeting of the World Heritage Committee held in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia. It had been on UNESCO's tentative list since 2010. A day later, the Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas, a group of three temples in Karnataka, were also inscribed, bringing India's total to 42 World Heritage Sites.