Martand Sun Temple

The Martand Sun Temple sits on a plateau at Mattan, about 9 km northeast of Anantnag town, with a sweeping view over the Kashmir Valley. Even in ruin it is the most important early medieval monument in Kashmir — a Kashmiri-Hindu architectural style with trefoil arches, pediments, and a peristyle of 84 columns enclosing the main shrine.

The site is open daylight hours and is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India. There is a small entrance fee. Combine it with a stop at the spring-fed pools of Mattan town below the plateau, which were a pilgrimage site long before the temple was built.

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Built in the mid-8th century by King Lalitaditya Muktapida of the Karkota dynasty, the temple was a sprawling colonnaded complex dedicated to Surya, the sun. It was destroyed in the early 15th century on the orders of Sultan Sikandar Butshikan — "Sikandar the iconoclast" — and the rubble still gives a vivid sense of the scale of what once stood.

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