![]() ![]() The interiors are straight from a 1960s sci-fi film, with stark white marble walls and carpets, and a walkway snaking up the circular walls towards the Inner Chamber. We congregate alongside two dozen other travellers in the Matrimandir gardens and are told it took 37 years to build, and that the creators took inspiration from the renowned Indian seer Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, The Mother, who founded Auroville in 1968.Īfter receiving strict instructions about not speaking or wearing shoes or touching anything, we are ushered inside. This is now a battle we want to win.įinally, day three arrives. We can enter the day after that.Īs complicated as this process sounds, it also renders the Matrimandir even more enticing. If our application is accepted, we must then return the next day, in person, to pick up tickets. ![]() Wrong.Īrriving in Auroville, we must first apply online to visit the Matrimandir's Inner Chamber. We promise to go, expecting to jump in a tuk-tuk, zoom 20 minutes to Auroville, see this sacred contemplative space and be back at our hotel by lunch. "It's magnificent," she gushed, "and … it will change you." When my husband and I arrive in town earlier that week, we are told by the charming French manager of our bougainvillea-draped hotel that if we see only one thing in Pondy, it absolutely must be the Matrimandir. Ute Junker MATRIMANDIR, PONDICHERRY, INDIA What they share in common is their power within four walls or more to change the perspective of the traveller fortunate enough to encounter and experience them. Most aren't even particularly well-known and some are by no means monumental. With these thoughts in mind, we asked our most well-travelled writers to reflect on the one building, putting aside the most obvious candidates such as those above, that have left a profound impression.Īs you'll see, their choices are as varied physically as they are experientially. As Winston Churchill once remarked: "We shape our buildings thereafter they shape us." They are, after all, human artefacts, redolent of a specific place and imbued with stories that can make us celebrate being human or lead us to despair for our species. No matter what building it is, even if you have no interest in angles and planes, let alone in architecture or engineering, it's nigh impossible to travel anywhere without engaging with them in some significant way. It may be the grand palazzi lining Venice's canals, the Pantone-coloured walls in Buenos Aires' La Boca neighbourhood, the circular Maasai villages, the ancient beauty of Angkor Wat, the monumental pyramids of Egypt or the timeless serenity of the Taj Mahal. Iran's iconic Pink Mosque is unimaginably beautiful.
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