Garhwa Fort

Garhwa Fort, on the Jabalpur road some 50 km south-west of Prayagraj and 5 km from Shankargarh, is a walled enclosure built around the ruins of a Gupta-period temple complex. In 1750 Vishwanath Singh Deo, a Baghelkhand ruler of the Rewa state, fortified the ruins with a square wall and parapets. The site is best known for the Gadhwa stone inscriptions, Sanskrit records of the early 5th century from the reigns of Chandragupta II and Kumaragupta.

Inside are two stepwells and many Gupta relics of the 5th and 6th centuries. Its most notable piece is a carved stone slab 6 to 7 feet high showing all ten avatars of Vishnu, dated to the 11th or 12th century. In December 2024 an inscription of 1096 CE, from the reign of the Chandela king Kirtivarman, was found here, among the earliest known to record the worship of Rama at Ram Navami. The archaeological site of Bhita, with remains of a Mauryan-era town, is 1 km away.