The temple will open to visitors from October 18.
New Delhi:
The United States will get its largest temple next month. The BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham, located 300 feet south of Times Square in New Jersey, will be formally inaugurated on October 8.
The 183-acre temple took nearly a dozen years to build and involved more than 12,500 volunteers from across the US.
Located in New Jersey’s Robbinsville Township, the temple is possibly the second largest after Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a 500-acre UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Akshardham Temple in Delhi is spread over 100 acres.
The Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in USA is designed according to ancient Indian culture. There are more than 10,000 statues and carvings of Indian musical instruments and dance forms in the temple.
In addition to a main shrine, the temple has twelve sub-shrines, nine shikhars (spire-like structures) and nine pyramidal shikhars. It also has the largest elliptical dome of traditional stone architecture.
Nearly two million cubic meters of stone were used for its construction, including limestone, granite, pink sandstone and marble. They came from various parts of the world, including India, Turkey, Greece, Italy and China.
At the temple, a traditional Indian step well called the ‘Brahma Kund’ draws water from more than 300 water bodies around the world.
The temple will open to visitors from October 18.
