The hilltop of Nagarjunakonda island is dotted with reconstructed ruins relocated from the valley floor before the reservoir filled. These include the remains of several Buddhist monasteries (viharas), a great stupa (maha-chaitya), and an apsidal temple — all carefully dismantled and rebuilt on higher ground by the Archaeological Survey of India in the early 1960s.
Walking among the ruins gives a sense of the scale of the original complex. Four distinct Buddhist sects operated here simultaneously, each with its own monastery, which tells you something about the cosmopolitan religious culture of the early centuries AD in this part of India. The views across the reservoir from the hilltop are also striking — a landscape of blue water and distant hills that would have looked very different when this was a river valley and centre of civilisation.