Chidambaram is home to the Thillai Nataraja Temple, one of the most significant Shaivite temples in India, dedicated to Shiva in his cosmic dance form (Nataraja) and considered one of the five elemental Shiva shrines representing the element of space (akasha). The temple's distinctive gold-roofed sanctum and its role as the spiritual centre for Bharatanatyam classical dance, given Nataraja's association with cosmic dance, give Chidambaram particular cultural as well as religious significance.
The temple's architecture and ritual practices, including the symbolically significant 'chit sabha' inner sanctum where the deity is represented partly by an empty space (representing the formless nature of the divine), make Chidambaram a site of particular philosophical depth within Shaivite tradition, distinct from more conventionally iconographic temple worship elsewhere.
The temple's significance as one of the five elemental Shiva shrines and its close historical association with the development of Bharatanatyam dance have made Chidambaram a centre of both religious and classical artistic pilgrimage for well over a thousand years.
October to March.
About 60km from Puducherry, roughly 1.5 hours by road.
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