Land use and land cover (LULC) changes is a dynamic, widespread and accelerating process, mainly driven by natural phenomena and anthropogenic activities, which in turn drives changes that world impact natural ecosystem. Change detection is one of the landscape ecological aims. Major aim of this study is to prepare land use land cover and their change detections by using remote sensing and GIS techniques. Empirical observation revealed a change in land use land cover classification in Madurai district in Tamil Nadu state, India. In this paper an attempt is made to study the changes in land use and land cover in Madurai over 33 year period (1973 - 2006). The study has been done through Landsat imageries of February 1973, April 1990 and January 2006. The land use and land cover classification maps were prepared through remote sensing and GIS technology. Ground truth observations were also performed to check the accuracy of the classification. The results indicate that there was a significant increasing trend in built up land and decreasing trend in agricultural land.