Places to Visit in Piranmalai

A hundred-odd villages of Burma teak and Belgian glass, built on trade wealth carried home from Southeast Asia, and a kitchen counted among India's finest. This is Chettinad.

In the dry heart of Sivaganga, a banking community that financed South-East Asia came home to build palaces — and left behind tiles, temples and a cuisine like no other.

Two unhurried days through the Chettiars’ homeland — palatial mansions and handmade tiles around Karaikudi and Kanadukathan, then the region’s ancient clan temples and the Keeladi Sangam-age dig.

Two nights in the temple city, then a day loop out to the mansion villages of Chettinad — the Meenakshi temple, the Nayak palace, courtyard mansions of Burma teak, handmade Athangudi tiles and a peppery Chettinad thali.

Nayak arcades, a Maratha art gallery, Asia’s largest wooden palace and the merchant mansions of Chettinad — a five-district trail through Tamil Nadu’s secular grandeur.

From the world-class Chola bronze gallery at Egmore to Sangam-age pottery dug up at Keeladi, Tamil Nadu’s museums trace two thousand years of art, faith and everyday life across the state.