Places to Visit in Triplicane

Also called the Big Mosque (Periya Palli), it was built in 1795 by the family of Nawab Wallajah Muhammad Ali Khan of the Carnatic, with the Nawab's mother funding its completion. Constructed of granite without steel or timber and topped by two tall minarets and domes, it is one of the oldest and grandest mosques in Chennai. It remains the principal congregational mosque of Triplicane.

One of India's oldest colleges, tracing its origin to 1840, it moved to its landmark Indo-Saracenic building on the Marina in 1870. Alumni and faculty include Nobel laureates Sir C. V. Raman and S. Chandrasekhar and many national leaders. Its long seafront facade is an iconic part of the Marina skyline.

Founded in 1914 on the Marina seafront, it was the first women's college in South India and the third in the country. Its colonial buildings educated pioneering women including former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. The campus overlooks the bay near the Anna and MGR memorials.

The samadhi of C. N. Annadurai (Anna), founder of the DMK and former Chief Minister, built on the northern Marina at the spot of his 1969 cremation, whose funeral drew one of the largest crowds ever recorded. A black-marble platform and pavilion mark the site on Kamarajar Salai. It sits beside the MGR and Jayalalithaa memorials.

The samadhi of matinee idol and former Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran, built on the Marina in 1988 and later expanded to incorporate the Amma Memorial of J. Jayalalithaa. Adorned with sculptures and landscaped grounds, it is a major site of political pilgrimage. It adjoins the Anna Memorial on Kamarajar Salai.

The first statue erected on the Marina seafront, sculpted by Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury and unveiled by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1956. It depicts Gandhi striding forward as if on the Dandi Salt March. It has become a customary starting point for processions and protests in the city.

An iconic bronze sculpture on the Marina by Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, installed on Republic Day 1959, showing four straining men heaving a rock to symbolise the dignity of labour. It is regarded as one of modern India's most powerful public sculptures and a symbol of the working class. It stands near the Labour Statue junction on the beach.

A statue on the Marina of Kannagi, the wronged heroine of the Tamil epic Silappadikaram, depicted holding aloft the anklet with which she confronted the Pandya king. Installed in 1968, it was controversially removed in 2001 and restored to the beach in 2006 after public pressure. It is a celebrated emblem of Tamil cultural pride.