The Most Beautiful Places in Karnataka
9 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Karnataka are Hampi, Jog Falls and Badami cave temples. The list covers 9 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Karnataka spans the Deccan plateau from the forested Western Ghats to dry granite country in the north, and for more than a thousand years it was ruled by dynasties that built on a grand scale: the Chalukyas, the Hoysalas, the Vijayanagara emperors, the Adil Shahis of Bijapur and the Wodeyars of Mysore. Each left a distinct style, so that a single state holds rock-cut caves, intricately carved soapstone temples, Indo-Islamic domes and a royal palace of the 20th century.
Hampi, the ruined capital of Vijayanagara, lies among boulder hills on the Tungabhadra, its temples, bazaars and royal enclosures scattered over a vast site. At Badami, the Chalukyas cut cave temples into red sandstone cliffs above a lake in the 6th century. The Chennakeshava Temple at Belur, begun in 1117 under the Hoysala king Vishnuvardhana, is covered with finely detailed sculpture of dancers and gods.
Bijapur shows the other great tradition: the Gol Gumbaz, tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah, has one of the largest domes in the world and a whispering gallery, while Ibrahim Rouza is an elegant tomb and mosque on a shared platform. At Shravanabelagola, the monolithic statue of Gommateshwara has stood on a hilltop for over a thousand years. In the Western Ghats, the Sharavathi river plunges down Jog Falls in four separate streams.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hampi | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 2 | Jog Falls | Waterfall | |
| 3 | Badami cave temples | Rock-cut architecture | |
| 4 | Chennakeshava Temple, Belur | Temple | |
| 5 | Gol Gumbaz | Mausoleum | |
| 6 | Mysore Palace | Palace | |
| 7 | Gommateshwara, Shravanabelagola | Sculpture | |
| 8 | Pattadakal Group of Monuments | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 9 | Ibrahim Rouza | Mausoleum |
01 Hampi
India · 11.1 km from Hospet15.335° N 76.462° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Rajesh_Ram from Pixabay Hampi is what remains of Vijayanagara, capital of the last great Hindu empire of South India. From 1336 until 1565 the city spread along the Tungabhadra River, and by around 1500 it may have been the second-largest city in the world after Beijing, drawing merchants from Persia and Portuguese Goa.
Did you know? The seated Narasimha monolith stands 6.7 metres high and originally showed the goddess Lakshmi beside him before the statue was badly damaged.
02 Jog Falls
India14.230° N 74.813° E
Nikhilb239 · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the Western Ghats of Karnataka, the Sharavathi River reaches the edge of a gorge and falls about 253 metres in four separate streams, which local tradition has named Raja, Rani, Roarer and Rocket.
Did you know? Above the falls the river runs over a rocky bed roughly 250 yards wide, and the waterfall spreads across an average width of about 470 metres.
03 Badami cave temples
India15.918° N 75.685° E
Image by Vijayanarasimha from Pixabay Four temples have been cut straight into the red sandstone cliff that rises above the Agastya lake at Badami, in northern Karnataka.
Did you know? Inscriptions indicate that Cave 3 was inaugurated on a full moon day, 1 November 578, and some of its carvings even bear the sculptors' signatures.
04 Chennakeshava Temple, Belur
India13.163° N 75.861° E
Dineshkannambadi ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Chennakeshava temple at Belur is where Hoysala sculpture reaches its most lavish. King Vishnuvardhana commissioned it in 1117 on the bank of the Yagachi river, and inscriptions say the work went on through three generations, more than a century in all.
Did you know? According to local legend the Narasimha pillar, carved from top to bottom with tiny figures including a miniature bull, could once be turned on its base.
05 Gol Gumbaz
India · 2.8 km from Vijayapura16.830° N 75.736° E
Image by sarangib from Pixabay The Gol Gumbaz, the "round dome" of Bijapur, now Vijayapura, in northern Karnataka, is a single colossal room.
Did you know? The same experiments found that a single sharp handclap in the gallery returned as many as 14 distinct echoes.
06 Mysore Palace
India · 1 km from Mysore12.304° N 76.654° E
Image by 3137490 from Pixabay Mysore Palace was the seat of the Wadiyar dynasty, rulers of Mysore, and it is one of the most lavish royal buildings of late colonial India.
Did you know? By 1868 around 10,000 people, roughly one in six inhabitants of Mysore, worked for the palace household.
07 Gommateshwara, Shravanabelagola
India12.854° N 76.485° E
Ananth H V · CC BY-SA 3.0 On the bare granite dome of Vindhyagiri hill above the small town of Shravanabelagola stands a naked man seventeen metres tall, carved from a single block of stone. He is Bahubali, known here as Gommateshwara.
Did you know? It remained the tallest Jain statue in the world until 2016.
08 Pattadakal Group of Monuments
India15.948° N 75.817° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by sarangib from Pixabay On the banks of the Malaprabha River in northern Karnataka, a cluster of sandstone temples records a moment when the two great traditions of Indian temple building met and were tried side by side.
Did you know? Queen Lokamahadevi built the Virupaksha temple to mark Vikramaditya II's victories over the Pallavas.
09 Ibrahim Rouza
India · 1.3 km from Vijayapura16.827° N 75.702° E
Akshatha · CC BY-SA 3.0 Two buildings of nearly identical silhouette face each other across a fountain on a raised stone platform: a tomb and a mosque, each crowned by a bulbous dome set on a ring of lotus petals and ringed by slender minarets and clusters of miniature domed turrets.
Did you know? The calligrapher signed his name again and again inside square and triangular frames, an unusual practice on an Islamic monument.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Karnataka?
- On our list, Hampi ranks first, followed by Jog Falls and Badami cave temples.
- What is special about the Gol Gumbaz?
- The Gol Gumbaz in Vijayapura, completed in the 17th century as the tomb of Sultan Mohammed Adil Shah, has one of the largest domes ever built without internal supports. Its gallery around the base of the dome carries even a whisper clearly to the opposite side.
- How tall is the Gommateshwara statue?
- The monolithic statue of Bahubali at Shravanabelagola is about 17 metres (57 feet) tall and was carved from a single block of granite in the late 10th century. Every twelve years it is anointed in the Mahamastakabhisheka ceremony.
- Why is Hampi a World Heritage Site?
- Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire, one of the largest Hindu kingdoms in Indian history, and its ruins include temples, palaces and waterworks spread across a boulder landscape. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 1986.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Karnataka?
- In our collection, the places in Karnataka are most often mausoleums (2), archaeological sites (2), waterfalls (1) and temples (1).
- How many places are on this list in Karnataka?
- The list covers 9 places.