Ask a resident how old Madurai is and you'll likely get a shrug and a reference to the Sangam era, more than two millennia back, when the Pandya dynasty ruled from here and Tamil poets convened on the banks of the Vaigai river. Greek envoys who could see the temple's soaring gopurams from every street corner are said to have started calling the city the 'Athens of the East,' a nickname that has stuck ever since. At the centre of it all sits the Meenakshi Amman Temple, whose towering gopurams still function as the literal centre the rest of the city was built around. Search for places to visit in Madurai and most lists start here, not as a formality but because everything else genuinely radiates outward from this one temple.

History keeps stacking up the further you walk from the temple. Thirumalai Nayakkar Mahal, raised in the 1630s by King Thirumalai Nayak and designed with a striking mix of Dravidian pillars and European arches, is best visited close to its evening sound and light show, and its 248-pillar courtyard has stood in for more than one Tamil film set over the years. A short drive away, the Gandhi Memorial Museum, housed inside the old Tamukkam Palace, holds the blood-stained cloth Gandhi was wearing on the night he was assassinated, a quieter, heavier stop than the temple crowds. Just outside the city, Alagar Koil, an ancient Vishnu temple woven into the Meenakshi wedding festival legend, and the jasmine farms behind Madurai Malli, the GI-tagged flower that scents half the city's garlands, round out a fuller list of things to do in Madurai.

It's rarely one single sight that visitors carry away from Madurai, more a set of small, specific sensations: jasmine garlands being strung by hand near the temple's east gate, the clatter of a late-night market still doing business well after most Indian cities have gone quiet, filter coffee at a roadside stall before the morning heat sets in. Sterling V Grand Madurai, a short drive from the Meenakshi Amman Temple, puts the palace, the museums, and the wider temple circuit within easy striking distance, with a rooftop pool and in-house dining as a base to return to once the old city's pace catches up with you.