Interesting and worthwile places to see in Chennai to understand its cultural and religious importance as well as recreational hot spots such as beaches.
One, the Pantheon Complex, contains the National Art Gallery, a children's museum, a Contemporary Art Gallery, and the Connemara public library. While the main complex includes separate wings devoted to various branches of science including Archaeology, Anthropology, Art, Numismatics, Botany, Zoology, Geology, and Chemical Conservation! Unlike many museums, this museum does not suffer the neglect and disregard more apparent throughout India and should be on your list of sites to see. Particularly fascinating is the Chemical Conservation gallery as the museum complex contains over 200,000 objects that are constantly at the whims of time. In an effort to preserve these valuable pieces of history, the museum has its own Chemical Conservation department and a team of devoted preservationists. While in other parts of the world this may seem standard, here in India it is almost unheard of and is quite commendable. In the Bronze gallery you will notice how well the various statues are preserved and cased with pleasant lighting; in the newly reorganized numismatic collection you will notice the same as well as attention to the amount of objects in displays.
While Chennai places importance on art and culture and is a center for Bharatanatyam dance and Carnatic music, it also has a collection of churches such as the Santhome Cathedral Church and St. Thomas Mount. Santhome is the burial place of St. Thomas, while St. Thomas Mount contains a number of interesting relics. From Santhome you will see the marina, as it is close by, and any visit to Chennai is lacking without a jaunt on one of its beaches. Though dirty by a naturalist's standards, the beach is beautiful and its 12km stretch of golden sand makes it one of the longest in Asia. The shells are unique and colorful and many of Chennai's citizens come her to have fun and relax. For a more solitary experience, which is difficult in a place as crowded as India, try the Theosophical Society and its grounds of over 250 acres of woods and gardens. There is a banyan tree with roots that cover more than 40,000 sq feet, and a library that has a collection of over 20,000 palm leaf manuscripts from all over the world. A reader of Yeats and any other branch of mysticism and the occult can appreciate the importance of the society founded by the mystic Madame Blavatsky. While other traditions have flourished in Chennai through the ages, the place has always been a center of Hinduism and a trip to any of its temples, like the Kapaleeswara temple in the suburb of Mylapore with its 68 bronze deities and its 120 foot tall Gopram or the 800 year old temple of Parthasarathy at Triplicane. Both are beyond description and are well worth being at the top of your list of sites in Chennai.
