திருவித்துவக்கோடு

The temple is one of only two Divya Desams glorified by Kulasekara Alvar alone, with no other Alvar's verses attached to it, giving it a distinct place in the Naalayira Divya Prabandham; his pasurams here (traditionally numbered among verses 688–697 of the Prabandham) are the temple's sole scriptural attestation.

Temple tradition holds that Vishnu appeared here for Ambarisha Maharaja, a king celebrated in Puranic literature as a devotee so selfless that he never asked anything of anyone, and even in prayer to Vishnu asked nothing for himself. The place name Thiruvithuvakodu is traditionally understood to mean "beautiful place," a reference to the setting in which this darshan is said to have occurred.

An inscription on the temple's door frame, in the Vattezhuthu and Grantha scripts, records a donation of gold to the temple during the eighth regnal year of the Chera king Ravi Goda (corresponding to around 1028 CE, contemporary with the Chola emperor Rajendra I. The donor is recorded as a Chola official, Chekkizhan Shakthinjayan, from Thondai Nadu) a rare direct trace of Chola-era engagement with a Kerala Divya Desam, and evidence that the temple was an established, endowed shrine at least a millennium ago. Kulasekara Alvar's own pasurams point to the temple predating even this inscription, likely existing already before the 9th century CE.

The temple is built in the classical wooden-and-laterite Kerala temple style common across the state, with the sloping tiled roofline typical of the region rather than the Dravidian gopuram towers of Tamil Nadu temples. Locally the site is also known as the Thirumittacode Anchu Moorthy ("five deity") Temple, housing five sanctums in total (one dedicated to Shiva and four to different forms of Vishnu) making it a rare multi-deity complex among the Divya Desams rather than a single-sanctum shrine.

Daily worship follows the customary schedule and ritual style of Kerala's Vishnu temples, distinct in form from the Tamil Nadu Divya Desams; because the complex houses five separate sanctums, a full visit typically covers more ground than a single-shrine temple.