Ramappa Temple (Rudreshwara Temple)

According to Wikipedia, a basalt pillar inscription records that Recherla Rudra commissioned the temple in 1213 CE, during the reign of Ganapati Deva, the third Kakatiya sovereign. Ganapati had granted Rudra the town of Palampet, where Rudra also built the large reservoir now called Ramappa Lake. The temple is reported to have taken about forty years to complete. The News Minute and The Week also give the 1213 date, the forty-year building period and the patronage of Recherla Rudra under Ganapati Deva.

After the Kakatiya dynasty fell in the 14th century, the temple was neglected, and plants grew into parts of the structure. Wikipedia notes minor damage to some images during Malik Kafur's siege of Warangal in 1310. It also records that the temple came through a major earthquake in the 17th century, which flattened many other buildings in the area. Systematic repairs began in the early 20th century under the Hyderabad Archaeological Department, whose first director, Ghulam Yazdani, visited in 1916 and wrote about the temple. After 1948 the temple passed into the care of the Archaeological Survey of India.

The Week reports that the Kakatiya Heritage Trust spent almost a decade working towards UNESCO recognition, and prepared the proposal with the ASI and the Telangana heritage department. The temple entered India's tentative list in 2014 and was the government's only nomination for 2019. The vote was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and took place in 2021. In 2024, according to The South First, the Union government released Rs 73 crore to Telangana for the temple under its SASCI capital-investment scheme.

Architecture and sacred features

The temple faces east and stands on a star-shaped platform about six feet high, inside a walled complex. Wikipedia describes the Kakatiya style as a blend of Dravidian and Chalukyan elements. The main body is red sandstone. Granite is used for the columns, beams and ceiling slabs, and the very hard black dolerite for the finest carving, including the bracket figures of dancers known as madanikas, which have kept their polish for about 800 years. Inside are a sanctum, an antechamber and a large pillared hall. The complex also has the Nandi mandapa, the Kateswara and Kameshwara shrines, a kitchen building and a mandapa holding a long inscription.

Two building methods are often singled out. The stepped tower (vimana) above the sanctum is built of light, porous bricks, popularly called floating bricks, which Incredible India says reduce the load on the structure below. The foundation is said to use a sandbox method, in which a pit filled with sand and other materials cushions the building against earthquakes. The Week links this to the temple's survival of past earthquakes.