Chaturmukha Basadi, Karkala

The Chaturmukha Basadi is a symmetrical Jain temple on Chikkabetta hill at Karkala and one of the town's best-known monuments. A long inscription of 1586 CE records that Immadi Bhairarasa Vodeya, Bhairava II of the Kalasa-Karkala ruling family, built it and arranged for regular worship; it calls the temple Tribhuvanatilaka-Jina-Chaityalaya and describes its four-faced plan.

Built mainly of granite, it is a square hall with pillared porticoes and a doorway on each of its four sides, which gives it the name chaturmukha, four-faced. Inside are images of the Tirthankaras Aranatha, Mallinatha and Munisuvrata. The temple looks across to the facing rocky rise where the great statue of Bahubali stands, which the Santara ruler Veera Pandya installed in 1432 at the direction of the Karkala Bhattaraka Lalitakeerti. The ASI looks after it as a protected monument.