Brihadeeswarar Temple, Thanjavur

The temple was commissioned by Rajaraja I (ruled 985–1014 CE), the Chola emperor whose conquests made the dynasty the leading power of South India and extended its reach to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Rajaraja called it Rajarajeshvaram, the temple of the Lord of Rajaraja. Construction began in about 1003–1004 CE, and the temple was completed in 1010 CE, in the twenty-fifth year of his reign; Tamil Nadu Tourism notes that it took about seven years to build.

The temple's walls form one of the richest archives of Chola history. They carry 64 inscriptions of Rajaraja I and 29 of his son Rajendra I, besides records of later Chola, Pandya and Nayak rulers. They list the emperor's gifts of gold, jewels and bronze images, the villages endowed for worship, and the staff the temple supported. One inscription of 1011 CE on the north enclosure wall names more than 600 people, including priests, musicians, dance teachers, accountants and craftsmen, and lists the women who danced and sang in the temple. Inscriptions are generally read as naming the chief architect Kunjara Mallan Raja Raja Perunthachan.

After the Chola capital moved to Gangaikondacholapuram under Rajendra I, Thanjavur declined as a royal seat, but the temple remained in worship. Later rulers added to it: shrines for the goddess Periyanayaki, Subrahmanya (Murugan) and the present Nandi mandapam date mainly from the Nayak period of the 16th–17th centuries, and the Dakshinamurti shrine was added later. The Maratha rulers of Thanjavur, who governed from the late 17th century to the 19th, maintained the temple and repainted parts of it.

In 1931 the scholar S. K. Govindasami discovered Chola-period frescoes beneath later Nayak paintings in the circumambulatory passage around the sanctum, one of the most important finds in Indian art history. The temple was inscribed by UNESCO in 1987 as a World Heritage Site, a listing extended in 2004 as the 'Great Living Chola Temples' to include the temples of Gangaikondacholapuram and Airavatesvara at Darasuram. The Archaeological Survey of India oversees conservation of the monument.

In September 2010 the temple's thousandth year was celebrated; a thousand Bharatanatyam dancers performed in its courtyard on 26 September 2010, and a commemorative stamp and coins were issued. Worship is managed by the Thanjavur Palace Devasthanam, whose hereditary trustee is the head of the Thanjavur Maratha royal family, together with the HR&CE Department. The Kumbabhishekam (reconsecration) of 5 February 2020, the first in about 23 years, was performed with both Tamil and Sanskrit hymns after a ruling by the Madras High Court.

The Brihadeeswarar Temple is the supreme statement of early Chola Dravida architecture, in which the vimana over the sanctum, not the gateway, dominates the temple. The complex is laid out on a rectangle of about 240 m east to west and 122 m north to south, entered from the east through two gateways: the outer Keralantakan Tiruvasal and the inner Rajarajan Tiruvasal, both built in Rajaraja's time. These gopurams are deliberately lower than the vimana, the reverse of the proportions seen in later Pandya and Nayak temples such as Madurai.

The vimana rises in thirteen diminishing square tiers (talas) to a height usually given as about 60–66 m; Tamil Nadu Tourism gives 216 ft. It is crowned by a domed octagonal shikhara and a golden kalasha, and the stone at its summit is said to weigh about 80 tonnes. The whole tower is built of granite, quarried far from Thanjavur's alluvial plain, and its blocks are laid without mortar, held in place by their weight and careful interlocking. The base (adhishthana) and the walls of the two lower storeys are divided by pilasters into niches holding large sculptures of Shiva's forms, guardian figures and deities, with the dedicatory inscriptions running in bands below.

The sanctum is a sandhara, or double-walled, shrine: between the inner and outer walls runs a dark circumambulatory passage on two levels. The lower passage carries the Chola frescoes, among them scenes of Shiva as Tripurantaka, the saint Sundarar and Rajaraja with his guru. On the upper level, 81 of the 108 karanas (dance poses) of the Natya Shastra are carved into the wall, the rest left uncut. Inside stands the lingam, about 8.7 m high and spanning two storeys. In front of it are the mukha mandapa, maha mandapa and the great pillared halls, raised on a common platform.

In the courtyard, facing the sanctum, sits a monolithic Nandi carved from a single stone, about 13 ft high and 16 ft long, under a Nayak-period pavilion whose ceiling is painted with Nayak murals. Around the courtyard run a pillared cloister with lingams and paintings, and later shrines for Periyanayaki, Subrahmanya (a richly carved Nayak shrine), Ganesha, Chandeshvara, Dakshinamurti and Varahi. The temple stands within the fortifications of the old town, near the Grand Anicut canal.