The Great Pyramid of Egypt was built from more than 2 million blocks of rock. But the Kailasa Temple, within the Ellora Caves in Maharashtra, is made of just one rock - five times the size of the Egyptian pyramid, and carved entirely out of a single mountain.
Location and Builder: Located about 30 km from Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad), the Kailasa Temple is the largest of the 34 cave temples within the Ellora Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is generally attributed to Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, who ruled from around 756 to 773 AD, based on inscriptions linking the temple to 'Krishna Raja'.
What Makes It Unique: Unlike other rock-cut temples, including the other 33 at Ellora, which were carved from the front inward ("cut in monolith"), Kailasa was carved from the top down out of a single mountain - a "cut out monolith" approach used nowhere else in the world. One of its pillars, over 100 feet tall, was formed by scooping out all the surrounding rock. Archaeologists estimate over 400,000 tons of rock had to be removed, a task some believe was completed in less than 18 years - a feat that continues to astonish modern historians and archaeologists studying the temple's construction.
Kailasa Temple sits next to the Grishneshwar Temple, one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Lord Shiva, making the site a remarkable combination of devotional and architectural heritage.