The Shikhara As North Indian Temple Tower

A shikhara is the tower rising directly above the garbhagriha in North Indian, or Nagara, Hindu temple architecture, built up in receding horizontal tiers that curve inward toward the top rather than stepping in flat stages, giving the finished tower a distinctive convex silhouette. The tower is not hollow in the way a Gothic spire is; in most cases its interior mass is largely a solid brick or stone core faced with elaborately carved sculpture, so its height is achieved by genuine mass rather than an engineered empty shell, part of why shikharas could be built to significant heights using pre-modern construction methods.

Vertical projecting ribs called latas run up the tower's face, dividing its surface into repeating vertical bands often covered in relief carving of deities, mythological narrative and decorative motifs, and the tower is crowned by a ribbed disc, the amalaka, itself topped by a pot-shaped kalasha finial. Because the shikhara sits directly over the garbhagriha and nowhere else in the temple complex, its height and prominence on the skyline function as a permanent external marker of exactly where, within the wider temple compound, the deity's image is actually housed.