The richest temple on earth — 60,000 pilgrims climb to Lord Venkateswara's hilltop shrine daily, donating more gold and cash than any other religious institution in the world
Tirupati (pop. 490,000) in Andhra Pradesh is the base city for the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple — the most visited pilgrimage site in the world and the wealthiest religious institution on earth, receiving an estimated ₹5,000 crore ($600 million USD) in annual donations including gold, jewelry, and cash. The temple sits at 880 meters in the Tirumala hills (11 km and 3,550 steps above Tirupati town); approximately 50,000–80,000 pilgrims visit daily, and on festival days numbers exceed 500,000. The deity Venkateswara (a form of Vishnu, locally known as Balaji) is believed to be in the Kali Yuga'…
The Tirumala temple's history extends at least to the 9th century CE when the Pallava dynasty king Pallava Dantiverman made a grant to the temple; inscriptions from the 10th century document the temple's existence and royal patronage from the Chola, Pandya, and Vijayanagara empires. The Vijayanagara Empire (14th–17th centuries) was the most significant patron — kings Krishnadevaraya and his successors donated enormous quantities of gold, land, and valuable jewelry, establishing the tradition of royal largesse that has continued to the present day with donations from politicians, Bollywood sta…