List of tourist attractions in Chennai

Chennai is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. With its historic landmarks and buildings, long sandy beaches, cultural and art centers and parks, Chennai's tourism offers many potentially interesting locations to visitors. A notable tourist attraction in Chennai is in the neighbouring town of Mahabalipuram, with its ancient temples and rock carvings of the 7th century Pallava kingdom is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
Chennai was ranked 9th in travel guide Lonely Planet's 2015 top 10 cities ranking.
Chennai had been the most visited city in India by foreign tourists consecutively from 2010 to 2012, overtaking New Delhi and Mumbai with visitors to heritage sites in Kanchipuram and Mahabalipuram and medical tourists making up the largest numbers.
In 2011, Chennai was ranked 41st in global top 100 city destination ranking, with 3,174,500 tourists, a 14 percent increase from 2010, This is up from 2,059,900 tourists in 2009, when Chennai was the third most visited city in India by foreigners ranked after Delhi and Mumbai. Tourists from United States, UK, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore had visited the city in 2007. In 2012, Chennai served 3,535,200 foreign tourists ranking as 38th most visited city in the world and most visited city in India.
In 2013, Delhi and Mumbai overtook Chennai in terms of number of foreign visitors due to their considerably higher growth rates. Chennai attracted 3,581,200 foreign tourists that year with a growth rate of only 1.1 percent over 2012. Chennai continued to remain the third most visited city destination of India by foreigners in 2014 and 2015 with 3,857,900 and 4,243,700 tourists respectively. The city was 43rd most visited city in the world for year 2015 and recorded growth of 10 percent in arrivals over 2014.
As of 2012, the city has 21 luxury hotels in the five-star category, with over 4,500 rooms in the inventory. As of 2018, the collective luxury room inventory across four and five-star categories is around 7,000. About 85 percent of the room demand in Chennai comes from business travellers. Demand in the CBD area comes mainly from BFSI and PSU companies, while the demand in the southern side of the city (Old Mahabalipuram Road) comes from IT/ITeS companies. Proximity to electronics and the auto industry players in and around the Sriperumbudur area in the west side of the city creates demand for hotels near the Chennai airport area among business travellers.
Chennai has some unique places to offer for shopping. Art and crafts, contemporary and traditional artwork, antiques, jewellery are available in the city. Traditional items like the leaf and palmyra-fiber handicrafts from Tirunelveli, bronze and brass castings and traditional jewellery from Kumbakonam, metal works from Thanjavur, stone carvings from Mahabalipuram, silks from Kanchipuram are for sale in shops and boutiques.
There are four large amusement parks, MGM Dizzee World, VGP Universal Kingdom, Queen's Land near Poonnamalle and Kishkinta Located near Mudichur in Chennai. The city also houses a paintball centre and water sports club on the east coast road. There are also a large number of beach resorts all along the East Coast Road highway to Mahabalipuram. The city is home to the Tamil movie industry, has over 100+ large cinema theatres including a few multiplexes which screen Tamil, English, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films. The city has a large number of restaurants offering a variety of Tamil, Indian and international cuisines. The nightlife in Chennai is vibrant and growing ranging from bars to pool parlours to lounges and clubs.