Guides · India
Chennai tickets
Ticket and booking rules for Chennai: timed entries, closing days and official links, checked September 2026.
Checked September 2026 against official sources
Chennai
Bookings and opening rules
Follow the official link before you buy. Full walking days: Chennai itinerary.
Archaeological Survey of India sites: the rules
- The Archaeological Survey of India states that an entry fee applies at certain monuments, that still photography is generally permitted at monuments, and that separate permission is required for filming operations. The Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram and the Fort Museum at Fort St. George are both ASI sites.Source: Archaeological Survey of India — Monuments · checked Sep 2026
On the day
What to watch at each stop
Fort St. George
- The Fort Museum is an Archaeological Survey of India site with a small admission and is generally closed on Fridays; the fort is an active government complex, so carry photo identification and expect a bag check
Government Museum, Egmore
- Ticketed, with separate camera charges, and generally closed on Fridays and public holidays; the bronze gallery is in a separate block from the main building, so ask at the gate rather than assuming
Mahabalipuram
- The Group of Monuments is an Archaeological Survey of India site with a single ticket for the Shore Temple and the Pancha Rathas; the open-air reliefs and cave temples are free. Allow a full day with the 56 km drive, and go early — the granite is punishing by midday
Shore Temple
- Covered by the combined Mahabalipuram ticket with the Pancha Rathas; the compound is exposed and the best light is the first hour after opening or the last before closing
Pancha Rathas
- Covered by the combined ticket with the Shore Temple; it is a ten-minute walk or a two-minute drive south of the main village, and the site is small enough to do properly in an hour
Questions
Quick answers
What is the best time of year to visit Chennai?
December to February, without much argument. Those months are dry and sit around 25 to 29°C, and December is also the Margazhi season, when the city fills with Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam concerts in dozens of sabhas, most of them cheap or free. March to June is genuinely difficult — May regularly passes 40°C with high humidity — and the north-east monsoon brings heavy rain and occasional flooding from October to early December.
The days these rules belong to
3 days in Chennai
Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu and a metropolitan area of around eleven million on the Coromandel coast. It exists because the East India Company bought a strip of beach in 1639 and built Fort St. George on it, making this the first English foothold in India and the place where the whole colonial apparatus was first assembled. But the older city is the Tamil one: Mylapore, with its temple and its tank, was a port when Madras was sand, and the apostle Thomas is said to have been buried on this shore in the first century. What the city runs on now is cars, software, cinema and a deep, unshowy conservatism about music, food and religion — and in December it turns itself over to a six-week festival of Carnatic concerts that has no equivalent anywhere.
