Chausathi Yogini Temple, Hirapur

Dated to around the 9th century under Bhauma-Kara patronage, the Hirapur Yogini temple is one of only four known circular, roofless Yogini shrines surviving in India, and among the best preserved. Its low laterite wall, barely 25 feet across, encloses 64 individually sculpted goddess figures, each paired with a distinctive animal or demonic mount and rendered with a ferocity unusual in Odishan art, evidence of an esoteric Tantric Shakta cult that operated outside mainstream temple Hinduism. The open-air plan, letting moonlight fall directly on the goddesses, was itself part of the ritual design. Rediscovered only in the 1950s, it remains a functioning but low-key shrine, valued today chiefly by scholars of Tantra and travellers seeking Odisha's more esoteric artistic tradition beyond the grand Kalinga temples.