Ramanathaswamy Temple

Ramanathaswamy Temple is best known for its corridors: the outer prakara stretches for well over a kilometre lined with more than a thousand carved granite pillars, the longest such passage of any Hindu temple. Built up in stages from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries under Pandya, Sethupathi and Nayak patronage, the temple sits at the tip of Rameswaram island, a site linked in the Ramayana to Rama's worship of Shiva before crossing to Lanka. Pilgrims traditionally bathe in its 22 wells, each said to carry different properties, before darshan. As one of the twelve Jyotirlinga shrines and a char dham pilgrimage site, it draws devotees from across India, while its corridor architecture alone justifies the visit on artistic grounds.