Siddhivinayak Temple

Built in 1801 by a local contractor, Laxman Vithu Patil, and funded partly by an agriculturalist patron, Deubai Patil, in what was then a village outside colonial Bombay, Siddhivinayak has grown from a modest neighbourhood shrine into one of India's most visited and wealthiest Hindu temples, reflecting Mumbai's own transformation into a global metropolis. Its sanctum image, a right-trunked form of Ganesha considered rarer and ritually more potent than the more usual left-trunked depiction, draws immense daily crowds and particularly heavy traffic on Tuesdays, the day associated with Ganesha worship. The original small shrine was substantially rebuilt and expanded in the 1990s into a multi-storey complex with a gold-plated dome, a change that prioritized crowd management and darshan capacity over historical fabric, making the site of greater interest for its social and devotional weight in contemporary Mumbai than for architectural antiquity. It remains closely associated with the city's film industry and business community, who are frequent, high-profile visitors.