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About this tool
Browse and filter Indian heritage monuments by state, historical era, architectural style and UNESCO World Heritage status.
The Indian Heritage Monument Explorer is a filterable reference to India's major monuments, indexed by state, historical era, architectural style and UNESCO World Heritage inscription year. Each entry gives the construction period, the ruler or patron who commissioned it and the single feature that defines it, so a fort, a stepwell and a rock-cut vihara can be compared side by side. It is built for students, teachers, quiz setters and travellers planning a heritage route rather than a single stop.
Open Indian Heritage Monument Explorer on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Cross-filter three dimensions at once instead of reading separate lists for each state.
Every World Heritage entry shows the year the World Heritage Committee inscribed it.
Who commissioned the monument and when it was built, not just where it stands.
India has 44 UNESCO World Heritage properties following the 2024 inscription of the Moidams of Charaideo in Assam — the majority cultural, along with natural sites such as Kaziranga, Sundarbans and the Western Ghats, and one mixed site, Khangchendzonga National Park. This explorer covers the cultural monuments among them plus many nationally significant sites that are not on the list.
UNESCO World Heritage status is an international designation granted by the World Heritage Committee for outstanding universal value; a Monument of National Importance is a domestic legal category under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, and the Archaeological Survey of India protects over 3,600 of them. Most Indian World Heritage monuments are also ASI-protected, but the reverse is rare.
The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, whose painting sequences begin in the Palaeolithic, tens of thousands of years before any built monument. Among constructed sites, the Harappan city of Dholavira (from about 3000 BCE) and the Ashokan core of the Great Stupa at Sanchi (3rd century BCE) are the earliest.
Nagara temples of northern and central India carry a curvilinear shikhara that tapers to a rounded amalaka finial, while Dravidian temples of the south raise a stepped pyramidal vimana over the sanctum and place tall gopuram gateways in the enclosure walls. Pattadakal in Karnataka is the classic place to see both, built next to each other by the Chalukyas in the 7th and 8th centuries.