Akshardham

Akshardham is a modern building executed by pre-modern means. Rajasthani pink sandstone and Italian Carrara marble were carved by thousands of craftsmen and assembled without structural steel or concrete in the shrine itself, following the shilpa and vastu texts. The plinth, the Gajendra Pith, runs with a procession of elephants — hundreds of them, each in a different attitude, a frieze that could hold your attention for an hour on its own.

It is also unapologetically a visitor attraction: exhibition halls, a boat ride through Indian scientific history, a musical fountain in the evening. Purists find this jarring next to the carving; others find the combination honest about what a living religious institution in the twenty-first century actually does. Either way the scale is difficult to convey in photographs, partly because you cannot take any — phones and cameras are left at the gate, which is why most people's memory of the place is unusually intact.