Temples of Orissa are well known for their architectural splendour. Under the ancient name Kaling, Orissa was the seat of a great empire as far back as 300 B.C. It came in the lime-light during the rule of tin-Jaina Emperor Kharvela. The Oriya kings had a great passion for creative works and many of them, through the ages, founded immense temples and monuments which we now look at with awe and wonder. Between the 7th and 13th century AD., however, the Oriya genius for stone-carving and temple-building reached the zenith of its glory and thousands of immense temples came up all over the land. The iconoclastic bigotry of the invaders succeeded in erasing most of these priceless works of art but the few monuments that have survived at Bhubaneswar, Puri and Konarak bear the evidence of the height of glory that Oriya artistic skill once achieved.

Although Orissa presents a fairly large variety of styles in temple-building, it has nevertheless a characteristic architectural genius of its own and its temples have been described as one of the most compact and homogeneous architectural groups in India. In these the Indo-Aryan style of architecture may be seen at its best and purest. Another view, however, is that the sustained architectural activity, of which Orissan temples are the culmination, originally approached this region from the neighbourhood of Mukha-lingam in the South, although in many ways this architectural movement was largely an independent growth. The temple-building movement in Orissa reached its peak of excellence between the 8th and 13th century A.D.

The temples in Orissa conform to the Indo-Aryan Nagara style architecture, with distinctive features specific to the region. Generally, speaking, all Orissan temples follow a common structural plan. A typical temple consists of apartments. The deul corresponding to the Southern vimana, is the cubical inner apartment which enshrines the image, and is surmounted by a tower. In front of this is the antarala or porch called the jagamohan which is usually square-shaped and has a pyramidal roof. Occasionally, one or two more mandapas, such as the natmandir and the bhogmandir, were added in front of the jagamohan, but these, where they exist, were almost without exception super-imposed on the original plan.

The temple sculptures of Orissa are of two major categories, namely the decorative motifs and the cult image. The principal category consists of such images as Kartikeya, Lord Ganesha and Goddess Durga on the external walls of a temple of Lord Shiva, Varaha, Trivikra Narsimha and the ten avataras on the outer walls on a Vishnu temple, the Dikpalas, each in its specified corner, the digacharinis and vetalas in the prescribed places, the eight or nine planets (navagrahas or astagrahas) in a panel with gajalakshmi above the panel in case of all temples. There are also gods and goddesses, and illustrations of different religious episodes to create a religious atmosphere. Although the cult images in a temple are the largest in number, they require being restricted to the cult alone. Religious mixture is reflected through the images of Ardanarisvara and Hari-Hara (as at Gandharadi). The sculptors were highly imaginative. This can be seen, for instance, in the fact that all forms of Durga and Bhairavas images of plausible types are witnessed in the temples.

Bhubaneswar has the richest profusion of temples and is known as the temple town of Orissa. The striking concentration of temples in Bhubaneswar is partly accounted for by the fact that the city was the seat of religion. The sacred lake of Bhubaneswar was once encircled by 7,000 shrines, of which about 500 now survive in different stages of preservation.

Some of the prominent temples of Orissa include the Jagannath Temple of Puri. This temple is visited by thousand of pilgrims throughout the year. Another major temple in Orissa is the Mukteshwara temple, situated in Bhubaneshwar. The various tther temples of Orissa include the Svarnajaleswar Temple, Yameswar Temple near Khandagiri, Bhaskareswar Temple in Megeswar, Leaning Temple Huma near Sambalpur, Sarankul temple, Simhanath Temple in Cuttack District, Jagannath Temple in Deogaon, Biraja temple in Jajpur district, Laxminarayan Temple in Therubali, Sureswar and Gouri Temple in Bhubaneshwar and several others.

Well-known all over the world for its wonder in architectural designs, Orissa is home to some of the most prominent temples in India.