India Guide
Tamil Nadu
The Rock Fort
Price: Rs1, camera Rs10, video camera Rs50
Opening time: Daily 6am–8pm
The massive sand-coloured rock on which Trichy's Rock Fort fort rests towers to a height of more than 80m, its irregular sides smoothed by wind and rain. The Pallavas were the first to cut into it, but it was the Nayaks who grasped the site's potential as a fort, adding only a few walls and bastions as fortifications. From the entrance, off China Bazaar, a long flight of red-and-white painted steps cuts steeply uphill, past a series of Pallava and Pandya rock-cut temples (closed to non-Hindus), to the Ganesh Temple crowning the hilltop. The views from its terrace are spectacular, taking in the Ranganathaswamy and Jambukeshwara temples to the north, their gopuras rising from a sea of palm trees, and the cubic concrete sprawl of central Trichy to the south.