Temple of Vedic Planetarium, Hindu temple in Mayapur, India
The Temple of Vedic Planetarium is a Hindu temple under construction in Mayapur, West Bengal, planned to reach 113 metres. Its white walls carry three ribbed domes, the pale-blue central one the widest of any religious structure, each crowned with a gold-ribbed finial. Two stainless-steel Sudarshana chakras sheathed in 24-carat gold leaf sit atop the main dome, the larger weighing 1.5 tonnes.
The temple was commissioned by ISKCON, whose founder Shrila Prabhupada first outlined the vision for the project in the 1970s. The altar floor was inaugurated on February 13, 2020, with representatives from around 80 countries attending the ceremony.
The temple displays models of the Vedic universe as described in ancient Hindu scripture through large-scale exhibits you can walk through. The depictions draw directly from the Bhagavata Purana, one of the central sacred texts of Vaishnavism.
The site is in Mayapur, a town reachable from Kolkata by boat or bus, and visiting early in the morning lets you catch the opening religious ceremonies. Since the temple is still under construction, some areas may be closed to visitors at any given time.
The temple is designed to contain a walk-through representation of the Vedic cosmos, where visitors move through different layers of the universe as described in scripture. This idea of physically crossing a cosmological map has no direct parallel in any other temple in the world.
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