Madhana Gopalaswamy Temple* - Madurai

This temple has been well situated in the heart of the town where south masi street and West masi street meets together. It's a lovely lord Vishnu temple facing towards the east in direction. Around this temple, you could able to find the Madurai's busy market of various trades.

Madurai has a unique feature of having a pile of same traders at a particular place. For instance, North veli street is known for automobile market. On both sides of this street, you could find a lot of shops handling wholesale, retail and both.

Like this, South Avani moola street is known for bullion market where as East avani moola street deals with stationery and paper items. All chithirai veethis (street) has been the main markets for textiles.

North masi street is famous for it's hardware shops while town hall has been occupied with hotels and lodges. Why i have been telling all these things to you is, like this, Madurai, the whole city has been the blessed with a lot of historical temples like Meenakshi Amman temple, Koodal Alagar temple, Immaiyil nanmai tharuvar temple, Madhanagopala swamy temple, North and south Krishnan temples, Thiruparamkundram temple, Alagarkovil, Palamuthirsolai and Vandiyur Mariamman Theppakulam so on. Apart from these temples there are a lot of well known churches and Dhargahs (Mosques) in the city.

Again a good news for the pilgrims is that the Koodal Alagar temple and the Immaiyil nanmai tharuvaar temple have been situating very close to this temple. So it's very easy to worship the three famous temples altogether in a single visit to Madurai.

They are two main shrines, one for lord Madhanagopalan and the other for Goddess Sri Madhana Mathuravalli thaayar. Here the presiding deity Venugopalan is in standing posture having conch,chakra in His two hands appears as lord Vishnu and flute in other two hands with the blissful appearance as lord Krishna. Near by him, goddesses Rukmani and Sathyabama are there in the main shrine.

This temple had been built on before the seventh century. There are a lot of scenes of Ramayana portraits painted on the walls of this temple.

An unique ritual of applying the paste of 'Maruthani leaves' (henna leaves) on the feet of Mathuravalli thayaar has been here in custom in order to get fulfilled our desire on every Thursday in a week. The devotees could do this ritual of applying 'Henna paste' on Her holy feet for a particular number of weeks (say 9 weeks), so that She could fulfill our desires.

Madurai's central bus stand (Periyaar bus stand) is very near, just we can have gentle walk to this temple. You should reach before 11 A.M., since the temple would have been closed at 12 P.M. and then it would be again opened at 4 P.M.

Again the Tamil month of 'Marghazhi' (Dec-Jan) has been the spiritual month of all the temples in Tami Nadu, particularly the temples of lord Vishnu.