Brahma Jinalaya, Lakkundi

A compact Chalukya Shiva temple at Lakkundi, considered a stylistic forerunner to the grander Kasivisvesvara that stands close by — finely proportioned and richly moulded.

The marquee of Lakkundi (c. 1087 CE) — a twin temple whose Shiva and Surya sanctums face each other across a shared mandapa, its walls a lacework of Kalyani-Chalukya carving blending Dravida and Nagara styles.

An ASI gallery in Lakkundi displaying sculptures, hero-stones and inscriptions recovered from the town’s scores of Chalukya temples and stepwells — a useful key to the whole heritage cluster.

A Chalukya Shiva temple at Lakkundi paired with the ornate Musukina Bhavi stepwell, one of the finely carved kalyanis for which the old capital is famed, with niched shrines around the water.

A Kalyani-Chalukya Shaiva complex in Gadag town enshrining a three-linga (trikuta) pedestal, famous for its adjoining Saraswati shrine with intricately lathe-turned stone pillars — a masterwork of 12th-century Deccan carving.

An early-12th-century Vishnu temple in Gadag town, linked to the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana, where the 15th-century poet Kumaravyasa is said to have composed his Kannada Mahabharata (the Karnata Bharata Katha Manjari).

A Western Chalukya Shiva temple at Dambal (c. 1124 CE) built on a rare 24-point stellate plan, its polygonal star-shaped vimana ringed by bands of carving and fronted by a large Nandi.

A small state zoo and deer park at Binkadakatti on the edge of Gadag, opened in 1972 in a dry-scrub reserve — spotted deer, blackbuck, birds and a green picnic stop for families.

A range of dry-deciduous hills spanning the Gadag, Mundargi and Shirahatti taluks — notified as a sanctuary in 2019, rich in medicinal herbs, wolves, hyenas and blackbuck, with the Nandiveri math at its foot.

A wetland tank near Magadi in Shirahatti taluk that draws thousands of migratory bar-headed geese and 130-plus bird species each winter — a Conservation Reserve and a Ramsar site of international importance.

An 11th-century Chalukya Shiva temple in the walled compound of Lakshmeshwar (ancient Puligere), carrying scores of old Kannada inscriptions — a major centre of the Chalukyan temple country.

The Sankha Jinalaya at Lakshmeshwar, an 8th-century Jain basadi to Neminatha (whose emblem is the conch, shankha), built under the Chalukya queen Kumkuma Mahadevi and holding a monolithic Sahasrakuta pillar of a thousand Tirthankaras.