Heritage, history and travel in one place
Explore India’s history, culture, heritage and destinations. Plan your journey and discover the stories behind every place.
Image: “Kandariya Mahadeva Temple, Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh.jpg” on Wikimedia Commons
Explore India
Start with a state, or browse everything at once. Each entry links straight to the places, dates and sources behind it.
1 Indian states and union territories with heritage records.
Popular destinations
The records with the widest reach: World Heritage properties, sites with several centuries of continuous history, and monuments that reward a whole day.
UNESCO · 1986Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh
Twenty-five sandstone temples at the heart of the Chandela capital, built across roughly a century and covered in carving of exceptional density — from towering Nagara shikharas down to the dancing figures on the outer walls.
UNESCO · 1989Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh
The best-preserved early Buddhist monument complex in India: three stone stupas, a fourth-century pillar, and monastic buildings set in a fold of the Satpura hills, where the Mahajanapada of Avanti held a major centre of the Sangha.
Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh
One of the largest and best-preserved medieval forts in India, crowning a flat-topped hill above the Tamas river. Nearly a kilometre of rampart, roughly thirty gateways, and a landscape full of later buildings from the Kachhwaha, Sultanate and Maratha periods all inside one enclosure.
Explore by category
Browse by what you want to see — monuments, monasteries, UNESCO properties, landscapes — or by the kind of trip you have in mind.
2 placesSites of the early historic period, from the Mauryas to the Satavahanas.
1 placeDefensive works and courtly residences across a thousand years of dynasties.
1 placeHindu temple architecture from the Chandela period to the Nayaks.
2 placesSites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Collections that hold the material record of the subcontinent.
No records yet
1 placeMonasteries, stupas and caves of the Buddhist traditions of South Asia.
1 placeLiving cities with continuous occupation and monumental cores.
Excavated settlements, ruins and monuments under protection.
No records yet
Landscapes and habitats of outstanding natural value.
No records yet
Seasonal gatherings that carry a place's traditions into the present.
No records yet
Coastal destinations, from the temple shore to the Arabian Sea.
No records yet
Hill stations, high passes and the forts built above them.
No records yet
Sanctuaries and reserves with conservation significance.
No records yet
Places of real interest that receive comparatively few visitors.
No records yetHistorical timeline
Select a period to see the places in this collection that belong to it, and read what is established about that era — and where the dating is still debated.
1526 – 1857 CE
The empire founded by Babur and consolidated by Akbar, reaching its architectural high point under Shah Jahan with the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, the Red Fort and Agra Fort, and ending with the uprising of 1857.
Associated with
How firm is this dating?
Aurangzeb's reign is dated either to 1658 or 1659 depending on the coronation taken as the start. The monuments of the period were built across a subcontinent where the empire's actual control varied enormously by region and decade.
This collection does not yet have records from the Mughal Period. The period is described above so you have the context; records are added as they are researched and sourced.
Interactive India map
Zoom, pan and search across India. Select a state to narrow the view, tap a marker to open the record, then get directions or add the place to a trip without leaving the map.
Plan your journey
The trip planner keeps the historical detail and the logistics in the same place, so an itinerary is built from places you have read about — not just places you found on a map.
Set the dates, the number of travellers and where you are starting from. You can change all of it later.
Search the collection, or add straight from a destination page or the map. Order them as you would walk the route.
Give each stop a day and a time. The panel reorders as you edit and flags days that are overloaded.
The whole route opens in Google Maps with every stop in order, ready for turn-by-turn navigation.
Featured heritage sites
India has one of the largest World Heritage inventories of any country. These are the records in this collection that carry an inscription, with the year and criteria taken from the official listing.
Cultural discoveries
A temple in the record is one thing; the festival that fills it each year, the stepwell that cools a whole town, the stupa that a village has kept alight for two thousand years — that is the other half.
UNESCO · 1986Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh
Twenty-five sandstone temples at the heart of the Chandela capital, built across roughly a century and covered in carving of exceptional density — from towering Nagara shikharas down to the dancing figures on the outer walls.
UNESCO · 1989Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh
The best-preserved early Buddhist monument complex in India: three stone stupas, a fourth-century pillar, and monastic buildings set in a fold of the Satpura hills, where the Mahajanapada of Avanti held a major centre of the Sangha.
Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh
One of the largest and best-preserved medieval forts in India, crowning a flat-topped hill above the Tamas river. Nearly a kilometre of rampart, roughly thirty gateways, and a landscape full of later buildings from the Kachhwaha, Sultanate and Maratha periods all inside one enclosure.
Festival dates follow the lunar and lunisolar calendars and change year to year, and several festivals are specific to one temple or one community rather than to a region. Every visitor-information panel here says so, and points to the official source, rather than publishing a date that will be wrong by next season.
Ready when you are
Pick a destination, read where the history comes from, then save it and drop it into an itinerary. That is the whole loop: discover, learn, locate, save, plan, travel.
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