Kedareshwara Temple, Halebidu

Kedareshwara Temple at Halebidu, the last of three series blog posts I am doing of the lesser known temples in and around Belur and Halebidu. You can read of the previous two here and here.

Kedareshwara Temple, like the previous two, is located in the Hassan district of Karnataka, India. It was built in the 12 century during the Hoysala empire. This temple is dedicated to the Lord Shiva. Like the other several temples built by the Hoysala empire, this too has a star-shaped outer  platform on which temple constructed. This platform also acts a convenience to walk around and admire the various intricate sculptures on the temple walls; and plenty of them there are. You can read more details on the temple here.

Below are some of the pictures that I took of it:

The temple is not an active one, i.e. no worship happens at the site. We also were not able to see the image of the deity in the sanctum when peering in from the outside. We however could not enter into the temple as the doors were locked when we visited. We did notice that some of the original stone blocks on the temple walls had been replaced. These ones did not have any carvings on this unlike the other ones. Sections of the temple had caved in owing to years of neglect. Hence these stone block must have been introduced as part of the restoration efforts. The superstructures above the temple is also no longer there. One can only imagine what grandeur it must have been when it was there.

The temple was completely deserted when we visited. It was just us.  We were definitely happy that we had decided to visit it. What a shame it would have been had we missed this beauty during our visit to Halebidu!

Virtual Tour

Here is a short video I made that will give you a good overview of the temple structure.