Padmanabhaswamy Temple
— — the god reclines.
Not only on a wall.
“In the East Fort district of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. The temple is dedicated to Vishnu in the reclining posture of Anantha Shayanam, the deity stretched on the coils of the serpent Adi Shesha. The seven-tier gopuram rises above the temple tank at the south of the complex. The Travancore royal family has served as ceremonial trustees since the early eighteenth century.
Padmanabhaswamy 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.
Padmanabhaswamy Temple stands in the East Fort district of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the south Indian state of Kerala. The city sits on the Malabar Coast about sixteen kilometres north of the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. The temple is dedicated to Vishnu in the Anantha Shayanam posture, reclining on the cosmic serpent. It serves as the family deity of the former royal house of Travancore, who held the kingdom from 1729 until accession to the Indian Union in 1949. The Padma Tirtham temple tank lies on the south side of the complex.
The temple blends Kerala and Dravidian architectural traditions. The seven-tier gopuram on the eastern side rises to about thirty metres above ground, faced in carved granite and capped in copper. The principal shrine is reached through a corridor of 365 granite pillars, each carved with floral and figural motifs. The reclining deity is viewed in three sections through three doors, the head, navel, and feet, of a roughly six-metre stone figure. Much of the visible structure dates to expansions in the eighteenth century under the Travancore king Marthanda Varma.
The temple is open to Hindu devotees only, with strict dress requirements: men wear a mundu without shirt, women wear a sari or mundum neriyathum. Photography is not permitted within the temple grounds. Two main daily worship cycles run morning and evening, with darshan windows posted at the entrance. The Painkuni and Alpashy festivals each bring a ten-day cycle of processions to the temple tank. Six underground vaults beneath the temple were opened by court order in 2011 and found to hold one of the largest treasures of any religious institution.