Gop Temple

The Gop temple stands at Zinavari, also called Juna or Nana Gop, in Jamjodhpur taluka of Jamnagar district, on the Vartu river south-west of Gop hill in the Barda Hills. It is a temple to the sun and is regarded as the earliest stone temple still standing in Saurashtra. Most scholars place it in the late 6th or early 7th century, in the Maitraka period.

It once had a hall and a roofed circumambulation passage, but these have collapsed, leaving an oddly skeletal shrine. The square sanctum, under 11 feet across inside, rises 23 feet with walls two and a half feet thick, plain to 17 feet and then stepping into a pyramidal roof. The stones are laid without mortar, and arched window motifs below a cogged amalaka crown the tower. Brick courtyards were added much later, and the site is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.