The Most Beautiful Places in Maharashtra
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Maharashtra are Gateway of India, Kailasa Temple, Ellora and Ajanta Caves. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Maharashtra sits on the Deccan Traps, one of the largest volcanic plateaus on Earth, built by vast basalt flows tens of millions of years ago. That dark, even rock proved ideal for carving, and for more than a thousand years Buddhist, Hindu and Jain communities cut monasteries and temples directly into hillsides here. The coast, in turn, faced the Arabian Sea trade, from island forts to the colonial port that became Mumbai.
The rock-cut monuments are the heart of this list. At Ajanta, around thirty Buddhist caves line a horseshoe bend of a river gorge, their walls painted with scenes from the life of the Buddha. At Ellora, the Kailasa Temple was carved downward from a single mass of rock in the eighth century, a complete temple with courtyards, shrines and life-size elephants. On an island in Mumbai harbour, the Elephanta Caves hold the great three-headed image of Shiva.
Other places show very different sides of the state. Lonar Lake fills a crater left by a meteorite impact in basalt, a rare kind of impact crater. Janjira, off the coast near Murud, is a sea fort ringed by high walls that its rulers famously held against repeated sieges. In Mumbai, the Gateway of India is a basalt arch on the waterfront built to mark the visit of King George V in 1911, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus is a monumental railway station in Victorian Gothic style, alive with Indian craft detail.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gateway of India | Triumphal arch | |
| 2 | Kailasa Temple, Ellora | Rock-cut architecture | ✓ |
| 3 | Ajanta Caves | Rock-cut architecture | ✓ |
| 4 | Elephanta Caves | Rock-cut architecture | ✓ |
| 5 | Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus | Railway station | ✓ |
| 6 | Lonar Lake | Impact crater | |
| 7 | Janjira Fort (Murud) | Fortress |
01 Gateway of India
India · 16.8 km from Mumbai18.922° N 72.835° E
Image by prabhdeep567 from Pixabay The strange thing about the Gateway of India is that its most famous moment — commemorating the arrival of King George V and Queen Mary in December 1911 — happened thirteen years before the monument itself was finished.
Did you know? Building the Gateway cost about 21 lakh rupees, roughly 2.1 million rupees in the money of its day.
02 Kailasa Temple, Ellora
India · 23.8 km from Aurangabad20.024° N 75.179° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by sachinkawale from Pixabay Most temples are built up from the ground. This one was made by removing everything around it.
Did you know? The main shrine closely follows the Virupaksha Temple at Pattadakal, itself modelled on the Kailasa temple at Kanchipuram, suggesting southern craftsmen worked here.
03 Ajanta Caves
India20.553° N 75.700° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
No machine-readable author provided. Soman assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY 2.5 The Buddhist monks who carved these thirty caves into a horseshoe-shaped gorge weren't just after dramatic scenery — the site served as a monsoon retreat, a place where monks, pilgrims and travelling merchants sheltered during the rains, when travel across the region became difficult.
Did you know? The caves are hewn from layered basalt of the Deccan Traps, lava flows laid down by volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous period.
04 Elephanta Caves
India · 13 km from Mumbai18.963° N 72.931° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Udaykumar PR · CC BY 3.0 The Elephanta Caves are cut into a small hilly island in Mumbai Harbour, some 11 km across the water from the Gateway of India.
Did you know? The north-facing main entrance is unusual for a Shiva temple, and its modest size conceals the scale of the hall behind it.
05 Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus
India · 14.9 km from Mumbai18.940° N 72.835° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Rangan Datta Wiki · CC BY-SA 4.0 The station was designed by British architect Frederick William Stevens and built between 1878 and 1888, in a High Victorian Gothic style modelled loosely on late medieval Italian buildings — but Stevens didn't stop at importing a European style wholesale.
Did you know? A marble statue of Queen Victoria once stood under the clock; it was removed in the 1950s and nobody is sure what became of it.
06 Lonar Lake
India19.975° N 76.507° E
Pranabk · CC BY-SA 4.0 8 km across and 150 metres deep. At the bottom lies a green, saline lake. Lonar is a meteorite impact crater — the only known impact crater on earth formed entirely in basalt, and the only crater lake of meteoritic origin in India.
Did you know? Debris thrown out by the impact flowed across the land in layered lobes resembling those seen around craters on Mars.
07 Janjira Fort (Murud)
India18.300° N 72.964° E
Sanjaybhagwat · CC BY-SA 4.0 Murud-Janjira rises straight out of the Arabian Sea off the Konkan coast of Maharashtra, an oval island entirely enclosed by grey stone walls about twelve metres high, with a ring of massive rounded bastions that seem to grow from the rock.
Did you know? In 1676 the Maratha Peshwa Moropant Pingle attacked with about 10,000 soldiers and was driven back.
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 Maharashtra?
- On our list, Gateway of India ranks first, followed by Kailasa Temple, Ellora and Ajanta Caves.
- How was the Kailasa Temple at Ellora built?
- The Kailasa Temple was carved from the top down out of a single basalt hillside, removing the surrounding rock to leave a free-standing temple. It is generally attributed to the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the eighth century.
- How was Lonar Lake formed?
- Lonar Lake lies in a crater created by a meteorite impact into the Deccan basalt. Its water is both saline and alkaline.
- How old are the Ajanta Caves?
- The earliest Ajanta caves were cut around the second century BC, and a second phase followed in the fifth century AD. Their paintings are among the finest surviving examples of ancient Indian art.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Maharashtra?
- In our collection, the places in Maharashtra are most often rock-cut monuments (3), impact craters (1), lakes (1) and fortresses (1).
- How many places are on this list in Maharashtra?
- The list covers 7 places.