Rani ki Vav — stepwell
Kshitij Charania · CC BY-SA 4.0

Rani ki Vav

  • 2 min read
  • 23.859° N 72.102° E

Interesting facts

  • When Henry Cousens and James Burgess visited in the 1890s the stepwell was completely buried, with only the well shaft and a few pillars showing.
  • Excavations in 1987–1988 recovered a marble sculpture of Queen Udayamati herself, along with a bronze Jain Tirthankara and a fragment of a Sanskrit inscription.
  • Patterns of patola, the double-ikat silk for which Patan is still famous, are carved into the wall at the stepwell's northern entrance.
  • Its interlocking frame of pillars, beams and brackets was designed to absorb earthquake shocks, with 2-metre stone braces spanning the corridor against soil pressure.
  • The stepwell creates its own microclimate: warm air cools against the stone and water, keeping the lower levels cool and slowing evaporation.
  • Medieval treatises classify it as a Nanda stepwell, a type defined by a single entrance and three pavilion towers.
  • A chronicle written in 1304 by the Jain monk Merutunga claims the queen's stepwell outshone the famous Sahasralinga Tank of Patan.
  • Among its carvings is a woman stepping out of her bath while a swan catches drops falling from her wet hair like pearls.
  • Another panel shows an apsara fending off a monkey clinging to her leg, one of many playful scenes among the divine figures.
  • Vishnu outnumbers every other deity on the walls, including a reclining Vishnu resting on the thousand-hooded serpent Shesha.

Why it is worth it

Rani ki Vav, the "Queen's Stepwell" in Patan, Gujarat, is a well turned into an inverted temple. From ground level you see almost nothing; then a stone stair drops away in seven levels, about 65 metres long, 20 metres wide and 28 metres deep, through pillared pavilions and galleries crowded with carving, down to a circular shaft some 10 metres across. Descending it feels like entering a building upside down — each landing darker, cooler and more densely sculpted than the last.

It is attributed to Udayamati, the queen of the eleventh-century Chaulukya king Bhima I. A medieval chronicle places its commissioning in 1063 and says it took about twenty years to complete, though scholars disagree about the dates. Architecturally it belongs to the Maru-Gurjara style, built on an interlocking system of pillars, brackets and beams — 212 pillars in all. Stepwells were practical structures for reaching groundwater in a dry region, but this one was also a monumental gift, and its decoration makes it one of the finest examples of the form anywhere.

The sculpture is the heart of the place: more than 500 principal figures and over a thousand smaller ones. All ten incarnations of Vishnu appear, alongside other gods and goddesses, celestial apsaras and scenes of women in everyday life. Much of this survived because the stepwell disappeared: floods of the nearby Saraswati river gradually silted it up, and it lay buried for centuries until it was rediscovered in the 1940s and restored by the Archaeological Survey of India in the 1980s. The protected carvings kept a sharpness that open-air temples rarely retain.

Rani ki Vav was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014, and since 2018 it has appeared on the reverse of India's 100-rupee banknote.

Getting there

The stepwell is on the edge of Patan, about 3 km from Patan railway station and a short auto-rickshaw ride from the town's bus stand. Ahmedabad is about 125 km away by road, around three and a half hours by intercity bus, and Mehsana, about 55 km away, is a major railway junction. The closest airport is Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (AMD) in Ahmedabad, about 102 km in a straight line.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Gujarat 5The Most Beautiful Places in India 90The Most Beautiful Stepwells in India 5The Most Beautiful Stepwells 6The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in India 6The Greatest Engineering Wonders in India 10The Most Beautiful Staircases 13The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

Rani ki Vav is a stepwell situated in the town of Patan in Gujarat, India. It is located on the banks of the Saraswati River. Its construction is attributed to Udayamati, the spouse of the 11th-century Chaulukya king Bhima I. Silted over, it was rediscovered in the 1940s and restored in the 1980s by the Archaeological Survey of India. It has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India since 2014. The stepwell is designed as an underground shrine or inverted temple symbolizing the sanctity of water, with sculptures depicting numerous Hindu deities. It is divided into seven stair levels, each with sculptural panels. These panels contain more than 500 principal sculptures and over a thousand minor ones, combining religious, secular, and symbolic imagery.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

23.85892, 72.10162per Wikidata