Bihar Quiz: Architecture, Monuments and Heritage Sites of Bihar

The excavated remains of the ancient university at Nalanda were added to the World Heritage List in 2016 as an archaeological site, and they are the second World Heritage Site of Bihar.

The founding of Nalanda is credited to the Gupta ruler Kumaragupta I in the fifth century CE, after which it grew for seven hundred years under later Gupta, Maukhari and Pala patronage until the raid of Bakhtiyar Khalji about 1193 CE.

Vikramshila was founded by the Pala king Dharmapala and became, after Nalanda, the most important centre of Buddhist learning in eastern India, especially of tantric studies; its ruins at Antichak in Bhagalpur district show a large brick stupa surrounded by monastic cells.

The Barabar hills in Jehanabad district hold the Lomas Rishi and Sudama caves, cut in the Mauryan period and polished inside to a mirror finish; the carved chaitya-arch doorway of the Lomas Rishi cave is the earliest example of that motif in stone.

The Golghar was built in 1786 to a design by Captain John Garstin of the Bengal Engineers, as a store of grain against another famine like that of 1770; its beehive shape and the two spiral stairways on the outside make it the best known colonial building of Patna.

The tomb of Sher Shah Suri rises on a stone plinth in the middle of a tank at Sasaram, an octagonal chamber under a single large dome with smaller domed kiosks around it, and it is the high point of Indo-Afghan building in India.

The Kumhrar mound in Patna has yielded the remains of a Mauryan hall whose roof was carried on eighty polished sandstone pillars, read as an assembly or audience hall of Pataliputra, together with the Arogya Vihara of a later period.

Two Ashokan pillars were found at Rampurva in West Champaran district, one crowned by a bull capital and the other by a lion capital; the bull capital is the best known animal capital from Bihar after the Sarnath lions and is kept in New Delhi.

The Vishwa Shanti Stupa or World Peace Pagoda was built in 1969 on Ratnagiri hill at Rajgir in Nalanda district by a Japanese Buddhist order, and the ropeway that climbs to it is one of the best known in eastern India.

Pawapuri in Nalanda district is held to be the place where Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, attained nirvana, and the Jal Mandir of white marble stands in the middle of a lotus tank said to have formed where his ashes were taken.

The Mundeshwari temple stands on the Pawra hill at Ramgarh in Kaimur district. It is an octagonal shrine of stone, Shaiva and Shakta in its images, carries an early inscription and has been in continuous worship, which is why it is listed among the oldest functioning temples of the country.

The gurdwara at Patna Sahib marks the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh in 1666 and is one of the five Takhts of the Sikhs, the only one in Bihar.