Nickel nanoparticles supported on titania were prepared by a combined sol–gel and chemical reductionprocedure. XRD reveals face centred cubic structure of nickel nanoparticles; while tetragonal anatase typestructure for the supporting titania phase. The structural and morphological properties showed well dis-persion of nickel nanoparticles on the supported titania lattice. From TEM images, the average crystallitesize of nickel nanoparticles was found to be ∼20 nm. HRTEM images identified lattice fringes with spacingaround 0.203 nm, which matches with ‘d’ value for the (1 1 1) plane of cubic nickel. The saturation mag-netization, remanent magnetization, and coercivity values of supported nickel/bare nickel nanoparticleswere higher than that of bulk nickel. This enhanced magnetization property was helpful for its separationfrom the reaction mixture by magnetic field. The influence of titania support on the performance of nickelcatalysts for the hydrogenation of 4-nitrophenol was investigated. The catalytic performance was higherfor supported nickel nanoparticles as compared to that of bare nickel nanoparticles. Supported nickelcatalyst was found to be superior, cost effective, magnetically separable and recyclable in hydrogenationreactions.