Hoysala Architecture

Hoysala architecture is the Hindu temple building style developed under the Hoysala Empire, which ruled the southern Deccan Plateau in what is now Karnataka, India, between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, reaching its height in the thirteenth century. Hoysala builders worked chiefly in chloritic schist, a soft soapstone that could be carved with far greater intricacy than harder building stone, and used it to create shrine towers, or vimanas, with star shaped or staggered square plans, elaborate pillared halls with lathe turned columns, and pierced stone window screens called jali. The style is classified as part of the Karnata Dravida tradition, related to but structurally and decoratively distinct from the Dravidian architecture of Tamil regions further south, and evolved out of the earlier Western Chalukya style while adding innovations unique to Hoysala craftsmen. Roughly three hundred Hoysala era temples survive in modern Karnataka, and three of the finest, the Chennakesava Temple at Belur, the Hoysaleswara Temple at Halebidu and the Kesava Temple at Somanathapura, were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.