Neasden Temple
A breathtaking hand-carved Hindu temple in northwest London, free to visit, built from thousands of pieces of Italian marble and Indian limestone shaped in India and assembled here.
FREE
The lowdown
Few first-time visitors believe what they are looking at. The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, known to everyone as Neasden Temple, is a vast traditional Hindu temple rising out of a northwest London suburb, and it is free to visit. When it opened in 1995 it was the largest of its kind outside India.
It was built in an extraordinary way. Thousands of tonnes of Italian and Indian marble and limestone were shipped to India, carved by hand by craftsmen into more than twenty-six thousand individual pieces, then shipped to London and assembled like a giant jigsaw. The result is a forest of intricately carved pillars, domes and ceilings.
Visitors of all faiths are welcome to walk in for free, see the prayer hall and the carving up close, and visit the exhibition on Hinduism beneath. Modest dress is required and shoes come off, but the welcome is warm and the building genuinely unforgettable.
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