Mallikarjuna Temple
— — a hill the gods would not leave.
Not only on a wall.
“On a forested ridge of the Nallamala Hills above the Krishna River. Sri Bhramaramba Mallikarjuna is among the most ancient of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva and the only site where a Jyotirlinga and a Shakti Peetha share one walled enclosure. The temple has stood through Chalukya, Kakatiya, Reddy, and Vijayanagara hands, the present compound largely built under Harihara II in the fourteenth century.
Mallikarjuna Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Sri Bhramaramba Mallikarjuna Temple stands at Srisailam, on a ridge of the Nallamala Hills above the south bank of the Krishna River, in Nandyal district of Andhra Pradesh. It sits at roughly 476 metres elevation, about 213 kilometres south of Hyderabad. The site is among the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva, the second in the traditional list, and the inner shrine of the goddess Bhramaramba is one of the eighteen Maha Shakti Peethas. The present granite enclosure, with its four gopurams, was largely built under Vijayanagara emperor Harihara II in the fourteenth century.
The temple is built almost entirely in dark grey granite, in the Dravidian idiom. Four gopuram towers mark the cardinal entries through the high prakara wall. The mandapas inside carry relief friezes of episodes from the Mahabharata and the Skanda Purana, including a celebrated panel of Pallava-period war scenes on the eastern wall. A separate Mukha Mandapa added during the Reddy period in the fourteenth century holds the Veerabhadra shrine. Adi Shankaracharya is said to have composed the Shivanandalahari at this temple, and a small shrine on the slope below the enclosure marks the tradition.
Srisailam lies about 213 kilometres south of Hyderabad by road, the last stretch climbing through the Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve. Darshan at the main sanctum is open from roughly 04:30 in the morning until 10:00 in the evening, with paid abhishekam tickets sold from a separate counter. The Maha Shivaratri festival in February or March draws several hundred thousand pilgrims over ten days. The Srisailam Dam, four kilometres downstream of the temple, holds back one of the largest reservoirs on the Krishna; viewing decks on the gorge are short detours from the temple road.