Durga Temple, Aihole

Aihole, Bagalkot District, Karnataka Early Chalukya temple, described as originally dedicated to Surya

Served from the stored corpus. Last scan Sep 28, 2026. Next scan Oct 28, 2026.

“IWULLEE East Front of the Temple”

Caption of Thomas Biggs’s 1855 plate. Not an inscription on the building.

Photograph

Earliest republishable photograph in this record.

East front

Oldest named temple photograph stored in this corpus. Thomas Biggs made it in 1855. It shows the east front of the Durga Temple at Aihole. An unidentified temple photograph catalogued at 1843–1845 is earlier and is not this building. The Virupaksha Temple at Pattadakal was also photographed by Biggs in 1855, and that print is not stored.

1855 Thomas Biggs, 1855. Open-access file from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source and license

View photograph

Sanctum Unknown or insufficient evidence · Medium confidence No measured plan is stored. The sanctum is named from the secondary account, not from a drawing.