Madurai

Top things to do in Madurai

1. 01

   Meenakshi Amman Temple - the towers, the tank and the corridors

   culture arts history 👍 Popular

   A walled temple city of some fourteen gateway towers crusted with thousands of painted stucco figures, the tallest of them on the south side. Inside, granite corridors run past the Golden Lotus tank where the Tamil poets are said to have tested their verses, a hall of a thousand carved pillars that now holds the temple's art museum, and shrine after shrine of oil lamps and camphor smoke. Unusually the goddess outranks her consort here, and pilgrims queue for her shrine first. Non-Hindus are welcome through the gates and around all of that, but not into the two inner sanctums of Meenakshi and Sundareswarar, where signs and guards mark the line clearly. Footwear comes off at the stalls outside the gate, socks included, and the granite gets painfully hot underfoot at midday.

2. 02

   Meenakshi Amman Temple - the night palanquin ceremony

   culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   Late each evening, before the temple closes, an image of Sundareswarar is carried in a palanquin from his shrine to the goddess's bedchamber, led by drums, pipes and a small crowd of devotees, and brought back at dawn. It is the least touristed and most affecting half hour in the building: the corridors are dark, the lamps are down and almost nobody there is a visitor. Ask at the gate for the evening timing, which shifts a little with the temple calendar.

3. 03

   Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal - the Nayak palace courtyard

   history 👍 Popular

   Thirumalai Nayak's seventeenth-century palace, of which only the entrance wing and its huge arcaded courtyard survive after a later ruler stripped the rest for building material and the British patched up what was left. What remains is startling: a colonnade of enormous round granite columns under scalloped arches and a domed audience hall in cream stucco, an Indo-Saracenic hybrid unlike anything in the temple. An evening sound-and-light show runs in Tamil and English.

4. 04

   Puthu Mandapam - tailors working under Nayak pillars

   shopping history

   The long pillared hall just outside the temple's east gate was built as a Nayak ceremonial pavilion, its columns carved with life-size portraits of the dynasty. It has been a bazaar for generations: tailors at treadle machines who will run up a shirt in a day, book stalls, tailoring cloth, brass and souvenir sellers, all under the sculpture. The fastest way to see how completely the temple and the market are the same organism.

5. 05

   Gandhi Memorial Museum - where the loincloth began

   history culture arts 👍 Popular

   Housed in Rani Mangammal's Tamukkam palace north of the river, this is one of the better Gandhi museums in India, with a long, unflattering gallery on British rule as well as the standard hagiography. Its relic is the blood-stained garment Gandhi was wearing when he was shot. The Madurai connection is direct: it was here in 1921, after seeing farm labourers on the road, that he gave up his shirt and cap for a loincloth and never went back.

6. 06

   Madurai night eating - jigarthanda, kari dosai and the mess kitchens

   food ⭐ Highly recommended

   Madurai calls itself Thoonga Nagaram, the city that never sleeps, and the food follows. Jigarthanda is the local drink and the local argument: chilled milk with sarsaparilla syrup, almond gum and a scoop of ice cream, fought over by rival stalls near the East Tower. The mess kitchens around Simmakkal do kari dosai, a dosa layered with minced mutton and egg, plus mutton chukka and parotta with salna, and they run late into the night. Idli here is a serious matter too, and vendors sell paruthi paal, a warm cottonseed milk, on the street after dark.

7. 07

   Vandiyur Mariamman Teppakulam - the great square tank

   culture arts

   An enormous stone-stepped tank southeast of the centre with a garden mandapam on an island in the middle, dug to supply the temple's float festival. On the Thai full moon in Jan-Feb the deities are floated around the island on a lamp-lit raft and the whole city turns out. The rest of the year it depends entirely on the rains, and out of season you may find a dry basin with children playing cricket in it, which is its own kind of sight.

8. 08

   Thirupparankundram - the rock-cut Murugan temple

   culture arts

   One of the six great abodes of Murugan, hollowed straight into the base of a rock hill on the southern edge of the city, its oldest shrines cut from the living stone by Pandya-era masons. A stair climbs the hill above it for a view back over the plain and the temple towers. Local pilgrims far outnumber visitors, and it makes an easy hour or two by auto or a suburban train stop.

9. 09

   Samanar Hills - Jain rock beds west of the city

   history off beaten path

   A low outcrop at Keelakuyilkudi, west of town, where Jain monks cut sleeping platforms into the rock and left carved Tirthankara reliefs and Tamil Brahmi inscriptions under the overhangs. A lotus pond sits below and the climb is short. Nearly empty, and a quiet reminder that Madurai was a major Jain centre long before the Shaiva temple defined it.

10. 10

    The Chithirai and Masi streets - the bazaar rings

    shopping culture arts

    The old city is a mandala: rings of streets named for Tamil months circle the temple, with the outermost Veli streets tracing the line of the fort wall the British pulled down. Each ring has its trades, so you pass from garland weavers and coconut sellers to brass lamps, cloth and gold in the space of a few blocks. Walking one full ring at dusk, when the towers light up and the shops are at their busiest, is the best free hour in Madurai.

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