Places to Visit in Maduranthakam

For two Pallava generations, a granite headland on the Coromandel coast became a laboratory of Indian temple architecture, and its chisels have never gone silent.

One cliff face, nearly a hundred feet of carving, and two rival stories that scholars have never fully settled. Here is how to read the great relief at Mamallapuram.

On a windswept stretch of the Coromandel coast, 7th-century Pallava kings turned raw granite into temples, chariots and one of the largest rock reliefs on earth.

Three well-paced days in the Tamil Nadu capital: British-era Fort St George and the Government Museum, Mylapore’s temple quarter and the beaches, then a drive down the ECR to the Pallava stone temples of Mahabalipuram.

One unhurried week from Chennai to Kanyakumari, taking in Pallava rock temples, the Chola heartland, Madurai and India’s southern tip.

Chola granite, Pallava rock-cut sculpture, rainforest ridgelines and a century-old rack railway — Tamil Nadu holds four strands of India’s World Heritage. Here is how they fit together.