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Kashi Vishwanath Temple enshrines one of the twelve Jyotirlingas of Shiva and charges no fee for general darshan as of 2026.
- 03:00 – 23:00 daily, with the sanctum closed to general dars
- Free
- 1 hr
Uttar Pradesh, India
Top 10 Places to Visit in Varanasi
Also known as Kashi · Banaras · Benares
Photo: Ashvin Kaitabhya, clicked by Abhishek Pandey / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Varanasi holds a strong claim to being the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, with settlement along its Ganga riverfront documented back roughly 3,000 years.
10 places · Updated · How we rank
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2. Dashashwamedh Ghat
Temple
Dashashwamedh Ghat hosts the nightly Ganga Aarti performed by seven priests on raised wooden platforms, drawing crowds of several thousand every evening as of 2026.
- Open 24 hours as a public ghat
- Free
- 1.5 hrs
- 3
3. Manikarnika Ghat
Temple
Manikarnika Ghat cremates between 80 and 300 bodies daily as of 2026, making it the busiest of Varanasi's two functioning cremation ghats and, by Hindu tradition, the most auspicious place in India to die.
- Open 24 hours
- Free
- 30 min
- 4
4. Durga Temple
Temple
Durga Temple takes its popular nickname, the Monkey Temple, from the large resident population of rhesus macaques that occupies its courtyard and surrounding trees, a practical detail every visitor encounters before any religious one.
- 04:00 – 13:00 and 15:00 – 20:00 daily
- Free
- 30 min
Sankat Mochan Hanuman Temple traces its founding to the 16th-century poet-saint Goswami Tulsidas, who tradition holds experienced a vision of Hanuman at this exact spot and established a shrine here in response, a legend the temple's name reflects directly:…
- 05:00 – 12:00 and 15:00 – 22:00 daily
- Free
- 45 min
- 6
6. Tulsi Manas Temple
Temple
Tulsi Manas Temple was built in 1964 in white marble by Seth Ratan Lal Sureka, a Kolkata-based patron, on the site where the poet-saint Goswami Tulsidas is believed to have composed the Ramcharitmanas, the 16th-century Awadhi retelling of the Ramayana that…
- 05:00 – 12:00 and 16:00 – 21:00 daily
- Free
- 45 min
- 7
7. Assi Ghat
Temple
Assi Ghat marks the southern boundary of Varanasi's roughly 6.8-kilometre riverfront, sitting at the confluence of the seasonal Assi stream and the Ganga, a location the Puranas cite as the point where the goddess Durga threw down her sword after slaying the…
- Open 24 hours as a public ghat. Subah-e-Banaras begins appro
- Free
- 1.5 hrs
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8. Bharat Kala Bhavan
MuseumClosed Sunday, National holidays, University-declared closures during examinations
Bharat Kala Bhavan holds roughly 100,000 artefacts spanning Indian art, archaeology, and manuscripts, making it the largest university-affiliated museum collection in India as of 2026.
- 10:30 – 16:30
- ₹20 Indian · ₹250 foreign
- 1.5 hrs
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9. Ramnagar Fort
Fort
Ramnagar Fort stands on the eastern bank of the Ganga directly across from Varanasi's ghats, built from chunar sandstone by Raja Balwant Singh in the 18th century as the seat of the Kashi Naresh, the hereditary ruler of Benares.
- 09:30 – 17:30 daily
- ₹20 Indian · ₹150 foreign
- 1.5 hrs
- 10
10. Sarnath
MuseumClosed Friday (museum only; the excavated site remains open)
Sarnath marks the site where the Buddha delivered his first sermon around 528 BCE, setting in motion what Buddhist tradition calls the Dharmachakra Pravartana, the turning of the wheel of law.
- Excavated site: sunrise to sunset daily. Archaeological Muse
- ₹25 Indian · ₹300 foreign
- 2.5 hrs
About Varanasi
The city's layout follows the river rather than a planned grid: a crescent of some 84 stone ghats curves along the western bank for about 6.8 kilometres, from Assi Ghat in the south to Adi Keshav Ghat in the north, while the old city behind them is a dense knot of lanes too narrow for cars, navigable mainly on foot, by cycle-rickshaw, or by the two-wheelers that squeeze through regardless. Kashi Vishwanath Temple, one of Hinduism's twelve Jyotirlingas, sits at the heart of this old quarter, now connected to the river by the redeveloped Kashi Vishwanath Corridor completed in 2021.
Transport hubs sit at the city's edges rather than its centre: Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport at Babatpur lies roughly 25 kilometres northwest, while Varanasi Junction (also called Varanasi Cantt) and the newer Banaras station handle the bulk of rail arrivals a few kilometres from the ghats. Sarnath, the Buddhist site where the Buddha delivered his first sermon, sits about 10 kilometres north and is close enough to visit within a single morning. Banaras Hindu University anchors the city's southern end, giving the Assi Ghat area a distinctly academic, longer-stay character compared to the pilgrim-dense lanes around Dashashwamedh Ghat and Kashi Vishwanath Temple further north.
October through March brings the most comfortable temperatures for walking the ghats and old-city lanes, avoiding both the pre-monsoon heat that pushes past 40°C in May and June and the monsoon flooding (July–September) that can submerge lower ghat steps entirely. Early winter mornings bring dense river fog that softens sunrise boat rides into something closer to abstraction than clear photography, a trade-off photographers should plan around rather than fight.
Day trips from Varanasi
| Destination | Distance | Drive | Why go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chunar Fort | 40 km | 1h | Riverside sandstone fort on the Ganga with a Mughal-era history stretching from Sher Shah Suri to the British, still holding Mir Bahadur Ali's tomb and a working ASI-protected structure rarely crowded with tourists. |
| Jaunpur | 60 km | 1h 30m | Sharqi-dynasty capital known for the 15th-century Atala and Jama Masjids, distinctive for a bold pylon-fronted architectural style found nowhere else in North India, plus a Mughal-era fortified bridge over the Gomti. |
| Vindhyachal (Vindhyavasini Temple) | 65 km | 1h 30m | One of the Shakti Peeth temples central to Devi worship in the region, forming part of the Vindhyachal Tridev pilgrimage circuit with two neighbouring temples, Ashtabhuja and Kali Khoh. |
| Prayagraj (Sangam) | 125 km | 2h 30m | Confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati, site of the Kumbh Mela and home to Allahabad Fort and Anand Bhawan — reachable as a long day trip via NH19 for travellers with an early start. |
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