Places to Visit in Gangaikonda Cholapuram

How Rajendra Chola I built a new capital to mark his march to the Ganges — and why its great temple still stands after the city itself vanished.

An excavated mound about 3 km from the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple where the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology unearthed the remains of the imperial Chola royal palace, built in burnt brick with flat-tiled roofing. It served as the administrative seat from which Rajendra I and later kings such as Virarajendra and Kulottunga I issued royal edicts, corroborated by inscriptions dated between 1031 and 1119 CE. Excavations from 1980 onward recovered iron nails, ivory objects, Chinese ceramics, coloured bangles, gold foil and copper coins.

The Kallamedu Formation is a Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) rock unit of the Ariyalur Group, laid down in a river (fluvial) setting of siltstones, clays and sandstones. It has yielded dinosaur remains and petrified wood, and the area near Kallamedu village is the reported find-spot of Bruhathkayosaurus, a titanosaur that may have been among the largest land animals ever. The formation is a key terrestrial-dinosaur locality that complements the district's better-known marine fossil beds.

The Kallankurichi limestone belt is where a fossilised dinosaur egg was unearthed in 1992 in the cement-factory mines and later certified by experts, with further clusters of titanosaur eggs identified nearby. The site lends its name to the Kallakurichi Formation, a Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) marine unit of the Ariyalur Group rich in ammonites, corals and molluscs. It is one of the district's most significant palaeontology and geology sites for students and researchers.

Three days, three UNESCO Chola temples and a delta full of bronze-casters, painted palaces and living tradition.

A Vishnu temple at Kallankurichi where the presiding deity Kaliyuga Varadaraja Perumal, popularly called Kaliyaperumal, is worshipped. Local tradition holds that the temple was built roughly five centuries ago by a cowherd at the spot of a post believed to hold miraculous powers, though the deity itself is considered far more ancient. It is one of the better-known Vaishnavite shrines of the district and lends its name to the limestone-rich locality around it.

A Shiva temple at Sripurandan dated by inscriptions to the period of Kulottunga III (1178-1218 CE). It drew international attention when its roughly 900-year-old bronze Nataraja idol, stolen and smuggled abroad, was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia before the theft was exposed, leading to the idol's repatriation to India in 2014. The recovered bronze is now held at the Government Museum in Kumbakonam rather than returned to the village shrine.