Place · festival goddess temple · India
Chettikulangara Bhagavathy, Alappuzha
Also known as Alappuzha, Chettikulangara, Chettikulangara Bhagavathy
The Chettikulangara Devi temple at Chettikulangara village in Alappuzha district, Kerala, 70 kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram — the home of the Kettu Kazhcha festival, held each February-March on the day of the Bharani star of the Malayalam Kumbham month. The festival involves 13 wooden effigy chariots (kettu — meaning 'tied' or 'bound' decorations), each 70-100 feet tall, built by 13 traditional village karas (quarters). The chariots are decorated with colourful cloth, mirror-work, lights and oil paintings; they are then dismantled after the festival. The Chettikulangara chariots are among the tallest festival effigies in India. The deity Chettikulangara Bhagavathy is a Durga-Lakshmi-Saraswati composite goddess. The temple's foundation is 10-11 century Chera; the current structure is 17-century.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 9.214, 76.477
Connections (1)
- Site withinAlappuzha
Chettikulangara Bhagavathy, Alappuzha sits inside Alappuzha and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Alappuzha”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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