Tamil Nadu,
stop by stop.

The trading post founded by François Martin in 1674 remained French until 1 November 1954, and the eastern quarter still keeps its layout: ruler-straight streets, signs still in French, and a canal separating the White Town from the Tamil town. The ochre-walled houses line up carriage gateways, bougainvillea and colonnaded verandas, now occupied by guest houses and cafés. On the seafront, the promenade passes the statue of Gandhi and the 1914-1918 war memorial. The police still wear the red képi.

Rajaraja I, the Chola emperor, completed this temple between 1003 and 1010: the sanctuary tower, the vimana, rises 63 metres over sixteen storeys of granite assembled without mortar. In front of the entrance, a six-metre-long monolithic Nandi weighs around twenty-five tonnes. The walls of the base carry Tamil inscriptions detailing the gifts made to the temple, the rice rations and the names of the dancers and musicians employed: royal accounts carved in stone. The site has been a World Heritage Site since 1987.

On an island between the Kaveri and one of its branches, this Vishnu sanctuary covers 63 hectares behind seven concentric walls, making it the largest Hindu religious complex still in use in the world. It has 21 gopurams, 81 shrines and 39 pavilions. The Rajagopuram, left unfinished for more than four centuries, was completed in 1987 and rises to 73 metres. The outer enclosures house shops, workshops and homes: you walk through a real neighbourhood before reaching the heart of the temple. UNESCO gave it a conservation award in 2017.

Fourteen gopurams covered in painted stucco mark out the sanctuary from all over the city: the tallest, the south tower, rises to 52 metres and dates from the late 16th century. The four outer towers alone carry nearly 4,000 figures, repainted in bright colours at each restoration. Inside, two twin shrines face each other, that of the goddess Meenakshi and that of her consort Sundareshwarar, and the so-called Hall of a Thousand Pillars actually has 985, each carved with a different figure. Every evening, a procession carries the god to his wife's chamber.

In the great temples of Tamil Nadu, religious life unfolds before visitors' eyes. Every evening at the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, the effigy of Sundareswarar is carried in a silver palanquin to the goddess's chamber, to the sound of the nadaswaram and chanting. In April and May, the Tamil month of Chithirai, Madurai celebrates the coronation and then the wedding of Meenakshi, followed by a chariot procession and Alagar's entry into the Vaigai River. In January or February, for Theppotsavam, the deities float, illuminated, on the Vandiyur Mariamman Teppakulam, the largest temple tank in the state, and in spring at Tiruvarur thousands of devotees pull one of the largest temple chariots in India.