Chola Architecture

Chola architecture is the Dravidian temple building tradition of the imperial Chola dynasty, which ruled over Tamil Nadu and, at its height, adjoining parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in South India from roughly 850 to 1250 AD. Built on wealth drawn from the dynasty's extensive military conquests, Chola temple building developed out of earlier Pallava architecture, which itself descended from the Amaravati school, and is generally described as an age of continuous refinement of stone temple construction and bronze sculpture. Historians divide the tradition into three phases, an early phase running from the reign of Vijayalaya Chola to Sundara Chola, a middle phase under Rajaraja Chola and Rajendra Chola during which the style reached achievements never equaled before or after, and a final phase from Kulottunga I to the end of the empire. The tradition's temples remain concentrated chiefly in the plains of central and northern Tamil Nadu, the historic core of Chola territory.