Place · Kalinga temple
Rājarāṇī Temple, Bhubaneswar
An eleventh-century temple built of the dull red rajarania sandstone it is named after, with a clustered shikhara of miniature turrets unlike anything else in Odisha and no deity in the sanctum — so it is maintained as a monument and not as a shrine.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.242, 85.844
Worth knowing
Its outer wall carries the eight dikpalas and a celebrated set of female figures — dressing, playing with a bird, holding a branch — that are the most-reproduced Odishan sculpture. The clustered tower is closer to Khajuraho's manner than to Bhubaneswar's, which has never been fully explained.
Connections (1)
- Site withinBhubaneswar
Rājarāṇī Temple, Bhubaneswar sits inside Bhubaneswar 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.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Rajarani Temple”. The Madala Panji temple chronicle of Puri; Debala Mitra and K.C. Panigrahi on Odishan temple architecture; Archaeological Survey of India records.
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