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Madurai

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• Madurai
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• Tamil Nadu's second largest city, Madurai, is a crowded market and industrial town that has existed continuously since the first millennium BC.
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• At Madurai's heart, with four great gate towers rising over 150ft high, is the wonderful Meenakshi Temple. Its labyrinth of corridors and courtyards centre on the shrine to the Great Goddess, known as the 'woman with the fish shaped eyes'. Although the present structures date from after the 13th century, references to the temple date back over two millennia.

The Greek envoy, Megasthenes, mentions Madurai in his account of India in around 300 BC. It was in the period of the Roman empire, under the Pandya dynasty, that the city assumed its great importance, even sending embassies to Rome.

Home to the ancient 'Tamil Sangam', (Academy of Tamil Learning), it became as important for its scholarship as for its religious heritage. One of the great Tamil literary epics 'Silappadikaram' was written here in the Roman period.