Best Heritage Sites & Monuments to Visit in India

An ivory-white marble mausoleum on the south bank of the Yamuna river in the Indian city of Agra.

The Palace of Winds, a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivals while unseen.

A UNESCO World Heritage site consisting of the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire.

The largest palace complex in Rajasthan, a labyrinth of 11 interconnected palaces built by 22 Mewar kings over 400 years, rising straight out of Lake Pichola like a marble ship.

A colossal red-sandstone Mughal fortress beside the Yamuna that served as the main residence of the emperors until 1638. A UNESCO World Heritage site with sweeping views of the Taj Mahal.

A 13th-century UNESCO temple carved as the chariot of the Sun God Surya — 24 enormous stone wheels, seven stone horses and thousands of erotic and astronomical sculptures on the Bay of Bengal coast.

The 1591 four-minaret monument at the heart of old Hyderabad, built to commemorate the end of a plague — the icon of the Qutb Shahi sultanate and the beating core of the city's bangle and biryani bazaars.

The official residence of the Wadiyar dynasty and the seat of the Kingdom of Mysore.

The old Ville Blanche — mustard-yellow colonial mansions with bougainvillea-draped balconies, a seafront promenade, and 10 km away the utopian township of Auroville where 3,000 residents from 50 countries live without money or religion.

A historic Hindu temple located on the southern bank of the Vaigai River in Madurai.

A 73-metre tall tapering tower of five storeys, a masterpiece of Indo-Islamic architecture.

A 500-year-old colonial quarter where Chinese fishing nets, Portuguese churches, Dutch palaces and Jewish synagogues share the same salt breeze. The oldest European settlement in India.

Rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments dating from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 CE.

A 40-acre fantasy sculpture park secretly built over 18 years by a government road inspector using only urban waste — broken tiles, bicycle parts, industrial slag — the world's most celebrated work of outsider art.

One of the largest rock-cut monastery-temple cave complexes in the world.

A group of Hindu and Jain temples famous for their nagara-style architectural symbolism.

A large marble building in Kolkata, dedicated to the memory of Queen Victoria.

The Naga capital where 17 warrior tribes converge every December for the 10-day Hornbill Festival — morungs, feathered warriors, war dances, mithun feasts and the WW2 battlefield where Japan's invasion of India was halted.

An ancient town known for its carved temples and rock-cut caves, particularly the Shore Temple.

One of the oldest stone structures in India, built originally by Emperor Ashoka.

'One less than a crore' — thousands of rock-cut Shaivite carvings hewn into a hillside around 900 CE, some 30 feet tall, now being slowly swallowed by tropical forest in northern Tripura.