Rani ki Vav, Patan, Gujarat
Rani ki Vav has 800 sculpted panels descending seven storeys into the earth, and UNESCO put it on the World Heritage list in 2014 for exactly that reason. Queen Udayamati commissioned it in the 11th century as a memorial to her husband, King Bhimdev I of the Solanki dynasty. The well shaft sits at the lowest level; the seven tiers above it are covered in Vishnu avatars, apsaras, and nagakanyas carved in sandstone so precisely that restorers working on the site after its 2001 excavation from silt found panels still sharp enough to photograph. Patan is 130 kilometres from Ahmedabad. The stepwell sits inside a fenced compound managed by the Archaeological Survey of India and is open daily except Fridays.
