Chennakeshava Temple, Belur

Commissioned by the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana in 1117 CE to commemorate his victory over the Cholas, the Chennakeshava Temple is the best-preserved and most ornate example of Hoysala architecture still in active worship. Its star-shaped plan, soft chloritic schist masonry and encyclopaedic sculptural programme -- friezes of over 600 elephants, mythic battle scenes, and the celebrated bracket figures of dancing women -- represent the style at its most refined, executed by named master sculptors whose signatures survive on the stone. Sixty years in construction, it anchors a temple town that grew around it. Still consecrated and garlanded daily, it draws art historians and pilgrims alike, and forms one corner of the Hoysala trinity with Halebidu and Somanathapura on the tentative UNESCO list.