Sri Mariamman Temple

This guide to Sri Mariamman Temple opens with Naraina Pillai, a government clerk who arrived with Raffles in 1819 and went on to lead Singapore's Tamil community, and the small wooden shrine to the goddess Mariamman he raised on this plot in 1827. It traces why a goddess linked to rain and disease mattered to the South Indian labourers who followed, and how the temple doubled as shelter and workplace for them. Look up at the six-tiered gopuram above the entrance gate, hand-plastered by craftsmen from Tamil Nadu.