Famous Landmarks in Chennai
Dravidian temple towers and British Gothic Revival buildings share Chennai's coastal grid.
Chennai's oldest landmark, the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in Mylapore, is built in the Dravidian style around clustered shrines and halls, predating the city's colonial history by roughly a millennium. Toward the coast, San Thome Basilica occupies the site of a Portuguese church raised in 1523 over the apostle Thomas's tomb, rebuilt in neo-Gothic form in 1896 to suit tastes British architects favoured at the time. Inland, Chennai Central railway station, begun in 1873 and reworked in 1900, combines Gothic Revival and Romanesque detailing across a far larger footprint. The three buildings together trace a path from a pre-colonial temple town through a Portuguese and British trading settlement into a colonial rail hub, in stone, brick and granite rather than any single material or period.
Kapaleeshwarar Temple
7th century
Its Dravidian-style compound holds two principal sanctums rather than one — Shiva worshipped here as a lingam under the name Kapaleeshwarar, and his consort Parvati as Karpagambal, goddess of the wish-yielding tree — set among numerous smaller shrines and halls inside a single walled precinct.
The Kapaleeshwarar Temple is a Hindu temple in Mylapore dedicated to Shiva, worshipped here as Kapaleeshwarar and represented by a lingam, alongside his consort Parvati as Karpagambal. Built around the seventh century in the Dravidian style, it is one of Chennai's oldest structures, predating the city's colonial development by roughly a millennium. The complex holds numerous shrines and halls around its two main sanctums. It observes six daily rituals and four annual festivals, the most prominent being the Aṟupatimūvar celebration during the Tamil month of Panguni, and is administered by the Tamil Nadu government's Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department.
- According to legend, Parvati once worshipped Shiva in the form of a peahen, or mayil in Tamil — said to be the origin of the neighbourhood's name, Mylapore.
- Its presiding deity is celebrated in the Tevaram, a seventh-century Tamil canon of hymns composed by poet-saints known as the Nayanars.
Photo: KurinchiRays (CC BY 4.0)
San Thome Basilica
1523–1896
Pointed arches and vertical Gothic Revival tracery cover its exterior, the neo-Gothic style British architects favoured in Madras during the late nineteenth century, giving this cathedral basilica a silhouette unlike the Dravidian temple towers found elsewhere in the city.
San Thome Basilica, formally the National Shrine of St. Thomas Cathedral Basilica, is a Catholic cathedral in Chennai's Santhome neighbourhood, seat of the Archdiocese of Madras-Mylapore. It stands over the tomb of the apostle Thomas; the Portuguese built the first structure on the site in 1523. The building was renovated to its present neo-Gothic design in 1896, a style favoured by British architects of the period, and solemnly consecrated on 1 April 1896 by the Bishop of Madras. It holds the rank of minor basilica within the Catholic Church.
- Its 1896 consecration was carried out by the Bishop of Madras, assisted by the Bishop of Dhaka, in present-day Bangladesh.
Photo: Rangan Datta Wiki (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Chennai Central railway station
1873 · George Harding
The terminus building's exterior combines Gothic Revival and Romanesque detailing, added when a second architect reworked the original 1873 design in 1900 — a mixed masonry style that made it one of the city's most prominent landmark buildings.
Chennai Central, formally the Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station, is a railway terminus built in 1873 to designs by George Harding and reworked in 1900 by Robert Chisholm in a mixed Gothic Revival and Romanesque style. It served as the terminus of the Madras Railway, later joining the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway in 1908 and the Southern Railway zone of the Indian Railways in 1951. The station underwent further modifications and expansions in 1959, and its lines were electrified in 1979. It remains a major hub for intercity and suburban trains.
- Electrification of its tracks did not arrive until 1979, more than a century after the station opened in 1873.
- Its full official name honours a former Tamil Nadu chief minister, though it is still widely known by its former name, Madras Central.
Photo: Starstuffseyyon (CC BY-SA 4.0)
History
Archaeological evidence places settlement in the area back to the Stone Age, and from the first century CE the region passed through the Chola, Pallava, Pandya and Vijayanagara kingdoms, whose temple-building traditions produced structures such as the Kapaleeshwarar Temple. Portuguese traders reached the coast in the early sixteenth century, building a church over the apostle Thomas's tomb in 1523. In 1639, the British East India Company obtained a grant to coastal land holding the fishing village of Madrasapattinam, developing Madras port and building Fort St. George, the first British fortress in India. Britain and France then contended for the city through the eighteenth century. The Greater Chennai Corporation, incorporated in 1688, is the second-oldest municipal corporation in the world after the City of London Corporation, and the city's nineteenth-century growth as a colonial port produced the Gothic Revival buildings that now stand alongside the older temple architecture.