Vadakkunnathan Temple, Thrissur
— — a temple older than its city.
Not only on a wall.
“At the centre of Thrissur, on a small rise ringed by old teak trees. The outer walls are unpainted laterite; the inner shrines hold some of the finest Kerala-school mural painting from the 16th to 18th centuries. Each April the open ground around the temple fills for Thrissur Pooram, the loudest and most photographed festival in Kerala.
Vadakkunnathan Temple, Thrissur, 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.
Vadakkunnathan stands on a low hill in the centre of Thrissur, the cultural capital of Kerala in southern India. The complex is one of the oldest active Shiva temples in the state, with construction campaigns documented from the 9th century onward and likely older foundations. It is ringed by Thekkinkadu Maidan, a public ground shaded by teak trees more than a century old. The temple received the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award of Merit for cultural heritage conservation in 2015. The inner shrines are open only to Hindus; the outer compound is open to all visitors.
The plan is classical Kerala: a circular sanctum, the sreekovil, under a conical copper roof, set inside a rectangular outer wall of laterite. Three principal shrines stand inside, dedicated to Shiva, Sankaranarayana, and Rama. The inner walls hold a sequence of murals in the Kerala school, executed in mineral pigments between roughly the 16th and 18th centuries; the Nrithanatha panel, showing dancing Shiva, is the most often cited. The carpentry is teak from the Western Ghats. The conservation work that earned the 2015 UNESCO citation was led by INTACH over more than a decade.
Thrissur Pooram is held in late April or early May, on the Pooram asterism in the Malayalam month of Medam. Two ranged groups, Paramekkavu and Thiruvambady, bring lines of caparisoned elephants onto the Maidan around Vadakkunnathan. The day is structured around panchavadyam drumming, the kudamattam parasol exchange in the afternoon, and a fireworks competition before dawn. The festival was reorganised in its present form by Sakthan Thampuran, the ruler of Cochin, in 1798. Crowds run into the hundreds of thousands; the temple itself remains closed during the loudest hours.