Sri Vaikundanatha Perumal Temple (Vaikunta Perumal Kovil)

The temple's original name, Paramechuravinnagaram in Tamil and Vishnugriha in Sanskrit, both translate to something close to "the house of Vishnu" or "Vishnu's palace," and were chosen deliberately: Parameshvara was an epithet of the reigning Pallava emperor, and the temple was conceived as a royal residence for the god in the same architectural language used for a king's own palace. That royal framing is itself part of why the temple is significant beyond the usual Divya Desam narrative of an Alvar's verses or a devotee's legend. It is, in effect, a piece of state architecture built to declare Vishnu's residence in the Pallava capital.

Temple tradition also holds that Vishnu appeared here before Pallava princes who had performed a yajna (fire sacrifice) in his honour, granting the site its devotional legitimacy as a Divya Desam alongside its dynastic origin.

The temple was built in the 8th century CE by the Pallava emperor Nandivarman II Pallavamalla, whose reign is closely associated with a wave of temple construction across Kanchipuram. Architecturally, it marks a clear departure from the single-sanctum temples that preceded it in the Pallava building tradition, representing one of the earliest known examples of a multi-storey Vishnu temple in South India, a design that later reappeared, in modified form, at the Vaikunta Perumal temple in Uthiramerur, the Koodal Azhagar temple in Madurai, and the Rajagopalaswamy temple at Mannargudi, all of which are understood to have drawn on this Kanchipuram original.

The temple's colonnade of lion-pillars, carved directly into massive granite piers, is also considered an early precursor to the much larger thousand-pillared halls that became a hallmark of later Vijayanagara-era temple architecture across Tamil Nadu.

The sanctum is built as three concentric, vertically stacked squares connected by a narrow internal passage, with the topmost level capped by a finial. Each of the three storeys houses the same deity, Vaikundanatha Perumal, in a different classical posture: seated on the ground floor, reclining on the middle floor, and standing on the topmost floor, a single, continuous theological statement about Vishnu's nature across all three postures, expressed architecturally rather than merely through separate shrines. The temple is built of granite mixed with sandstone, and its lion-pillared colonnades are considered an important early example of a decorative and structural motif that would recur across later South Indian temple architecture.

Vaikunta Ekadashi, observed in the Tamil month of Margazhi (December–January), is the temple's single most important festival day, and here it carries a distinction that sets this shrine apart from most other Divya Desams: the normally inaccessible first-floor sanctum, where Vaikundanatha Perumal reclines, is specially opened to devotees on this one occasion each year, allowing a rare direct darshan of the middle-storey form that is otherwise viewed only from below.

Vaikasi Brahmotsavam, held over several days in the Tamil month of Vaikasi (May–June), is the temple's principal annual festival, with processional utsavam through Kanchipuram's streets alongside the town's other major Vaishnava temples during the same season.

In keeping with Agamic practice at a major Pallava-era shrine, the temple traditionally observes six daily poojas: Ushatkalam in the early morning, Kalasanthi shortly after, Uchikalam at midday, Sayarakshai in the evening, Irandamkalam thereafter, and Ardhajamam as the final rite of the day. Each of these follows the customary three-part sequence of alangaram (decoration of the deity), naivedyam (food offering) and deepa aradhanai (waving of lit lamps) before the sanctum is closed.

Because the temple's distinguishing feature (the three-storey sanctum) places the reclining and standing forms of Vaikundanatha Perumal on upper floors not normally open to the public, everyday darshan is generally of the seated ground-floor form, with the other two postures ordinarily viewed from outside or below except during Vaikunta Ekadashi.