Chidambaram is the city of a thousand temples. Every road in this town leads to a gopuram, the huge temple gateways that rise up many meters, as you enter the precincts of any shrine. The city is over three thousand years old and is an important aspect of any tour of Tamil Nadu. It is easily covered in a day trip from Chennai, the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu. Chidambaram is famous for both its Tamil Shaivaite and Vaishnavite devotional aspects, i.e. to the worship of the God Shiva and Vishnu respectively.

These Tamil regional cults arose and flourished between the fifth and ninth centuries A.D. and were among the first cults devoted to bhakti, a popular religion of emotional devotion to a personal God, which eventually permeated the Hindu tradition in all its aspects. The Tamil saints sang many Shiva songs in honor of the god. They were traditionally meant to be sung holding certain mudras or hand gestures, as is prescribed in the Chanakya Niti, a book by the advisor of Chandragupta Maurya.

Most of these photos are from Chidambaram. It is in Chidambaram that South Indian culture really set forth its expressive creativity. The huge number of temples are an easy chance to study the evolution of South Indian temple architecture over hundreds of years.The oldest extant temple at Chidambaram is the Thillai Nataraja Temple. Its construction predates the gopuram style and is clearly a precursor to these huge gateways. Built by the same Pallava king who also made the Shore Temple at nearby Mamallapuram, Kailasantha seems to have evolved a bit more from its seashore precursor.

Next in the timeline is the Ekambareswara Temple, one of the Pancha Bhuta sthalas, among the most important temples in India. The 57m gopuram is the beginning of the 9th-century temple, which includes a hall of thousand pillars. Within the temple, a 2500-year-old mango tree, which gives four kinds of mangoes, is said to be the site of Shiva and Parvati's marriage. The linga here is made of earth, and is supposed to have been crafted by Parvati, when she was worshipping Shiva.