In 2011 this temple briefly became the richest place on earth, according to newspapers that had no way of knowing. The story is genuinely extraordinary, and almost every number attached to it in general circulation is an estimate of unclear origin repeated until it hardened. The parts that are documented are documented very precisely, so it is worth separating the two.
What actually happened, with dates
The Supreme Court ordered the vaults opened on 27 June 2011, acting on a private petition seeking transparency in how the temple was run. Five vaults were opened on 30 June 2011. There are eight known vaults, lettered A to H — and that is itself a moving number, because G and H were only identified in 2014, by the amicus curiae appointed to oversee the inventory. Three of the eight have never been opened in living memory.
What the inventory produced was counts of objects, not a price. That distinction is the whole article.
The 2011 inventory, as counted
| Vault | Groups of objects recorded |
|---|---|
| A | over 102,000 |
| C | 1,469 |
| D | 617 |
| E and F together | about 40 |
| B | not opened |
| G and H | not identified until 2014; not opened |
Among the recorded objects are a roughly four-foot solid gold image of Mahavishnu set with diamonds, gold thrones, chains, sacks of coins including Roman-era and Napoleonic-era pieces, and loose precious stones. Those are descriptions from a count. None of them is a valuation.
Where the money figures came from
You will see three numbers most often: about one lakh crore rupees, about twenty billion US dollars, and about twenty-two billion. Track any of them back and they dissolve. The rupee figure is universally introduced as an unofficial estimate. The dollar figures are conversions of it made by wire agencies at different exchange rates and different times, which is why they disagree with each other by two billion dollars while claiming to describe the same objects.
No official valuation has been published. And the reason is not secrecy so much as impossibility: much of what is in those vaults is archaeologically significant, and there is no honest market price for a temple ornament of unknown date that will never be sold. Weighing the gold would give you a number. It would not give you the value, and everyone involved has been careful not to pretend otherwise.
- Ask whether the source is counting objects or pricing them. Counts here are official; prices are not.
- Two dollar figures that differ while describing identical contents are conversions, not appraisals.
- A number introduced as "unofficial" in its first appearance stays unofficial however often it is repeated.
- Antiquities that cannot legally be sold do not have a market value, only a melt value — and the two are not close.
Vault B, which is the one people mean
Vault B has not been opened since at least the 1880s. The court-appointed officials working through it in 2011 found three successive doors — a metal grille, then wood, then iron — and stopped at the iron one, after the royal family obtained an injunction against going further. The objection was religious rather than legal in substance: the vault is held to be under the deity’s protection, and opening it is held to invite consequences.
In July 2020 the Supreme Court declined to order it opened, citing religious sentiment, and in the same judgment restored the Travancore royal family’s right to manage the temple and its finances, overturning a Kerala High Court decision that had gone the other way. So the position today is settled and stable: the vault stays shut, and the family administers the temple.
What this means if you are visiting
Nothing is on display. There is no treasure exhibit, no vault tour and nothing to photograph — the vaults are working temple structure, not a museum, and the temple has a strict dress code and admission rules for a functioning place of worship. What you can see is the building above them, which is worth the visit on its own account and is the one part of this story that has never been in dispute.
The honest summary is that a very large quantity of objects was carefully counted, that nobody knows what they are worth, and that the most famous room in the story remains a door nobody has been through in roughly a hundred and forty years.