Sri Venkateswara Museum on Temple Art

Set up in 1983 inside the Govindarajaswamy temple complex, this small TTD museum is about method rather than treasure: how South Indian temples were built and how they were used. Photographs and models of construction, stone and bronze images, wood carving, ritual vessels, coins, processional objects: enough to make the gopurams (gate towers) and corridors outside legible. Open daily about 10:00–18:00, entry free, and roughly 200 m from the railway station, which makes it an easy first or last half-hour of a trip.

A free half-hour by the station that decodes temple architecture before you join any queue