St. Antony's Forane Church, Ollur

Ollur's St. Antony's Forane Church, a Syro-Malabar Catholic parish, crowns the highest hill in Ollur, Thrissur, ringed by a huge wall known as the Aana Mathil, or elephant wall. With some 4,000 Christian families in the parish, Ollur has been nicknamed Chinna Roma, Small Rome. A temporary church went up in 1718 on land given by Malaekal Karthakal, and the church was blessed in 1722 with Arnos Paathiri present. Tipu Sultan set it alight in 1790, but only the facade burned. Jawaharlal Nehru visited in 1951, and a memorial in the courtyard marks police firing at the church during the 1959 Liberation Struggle.

Inside, almost every surface is decorated in wood, metal, stone, ivory and paint, and angels appear more than five thousand times, in fresco, wood, stone, metal and ivory. The seven-storey, 38 m belfry is said to have been the tallest structure in South India when built, and holds three bells brought from Marseille. The feast of St Raphael on 23 and 24 October is the main festival.