Temples in Gujarat

Gujarat's temple landscape runs along two axes. On the Saurashtra coast, the Somnath Jyotirlinga and the Dwarkadhish temple anchor the western end of the Char Dham, while inland the Nageshwar Jyotirlinga completes a Shaiva circuit around Dwarka and Ambaji stands above the Arasur hills in Banaskantha, close to the Rajasthan border. Between them the state holds two of the twelve Jyotirlingas, one of the four Char Dham shrines and one of the major Shakti Peethas — a concentration of sites matched by few other states, and one that supports a single continuous pilgrimage route rather than scattered day trips.

The historical layer underneath is largely Solanki. The dynasty that governed Gujarat from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries worked in a warm sandstone idiom of stepped toranas over doorways, pierced jaali screens and deeply cut friezes, and its best-known commissions include the sun temple complex at Modhera, whose stepwell tank carries 108 carved niches. Mahmud of Ghazni's raids in 1024-26 damaged both Somnath and the Solanki sun temples, which is why the chronology of these monuments is always given as a sequence of construction, destruction and reconstruction rather than as a single founding date. Each temple page below carries its own citations for dating, patronage and visitor information.