Kolar Amma Temple

Kolar’s name is widely held to derive from Kolaramma, the local mother-goddess whose temple stands at the heart of the old town and has been a centre of worship since at least the Ganga dynasty’s rule over the region in the early medieval period. The Cholas, who later controlled Kolar as a frontier province of their empire, further patronised the temple, leaving inscriptions that are important sources for reconstructing the area’s political history under successive south Indian dynasties.

As a goddess temple predating the more famous Hoysala and Vijayanagara monuments of the wider region, Kolaramma represents an older stratum of Karnataka’s religious landscape — localised mother-goddess worship that persisted and was absorbed into the mainstream Shakta tradition as larger kingdoms rose and fell around it.

Getting there: The temple is in the old town area of Kolar, close to the Kolar Post Office near the Court Complex.