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The Khajuraho temples stand in a small town in Madhya Pradesh, central India, surrounded by flat agricultural land with no geographic feature to explain their location — they were built here because this was the Chandela dynastic heartland, not because of any strategic or economic advantage. The Chandelas were a Rajput clan who ruled central India from approximately 831 to 1308 CE, and the main cluster of temples at Khajuraho was their principal religious endowment, built during the dynasty's most prosperous century (c. 950–1050 CE).
Originally the complex contained approximately 85 temples; 25 survive in varying states of completion. They are distributed across three groups: Western (the most numerous and best preserved, including the largest temple, the Kandariya Mahadeva), Eastern (with Jain temples alongside Hindu ones, reflecting the Chandelas' patronage of both traditions), and Southern (most distant from the main complex). All are built in the Nagara (north Indian) style, characterized by a curvilinear superstructure (shikhara) rising above the sanctuary, with clustered subsidiary towers creating a mountain-like profile.
The sculptural program covering the outer walls is what made Khajuraho internationally famous after its "rediscovery" by T.S. Burt of the Bengal Engineers in 1838. The sculptures depict three registers of subject matter: celestial beings (apsaras and surasundaris — the heavenly nymphs that adorn the central band), gods and goddesses in ritual and narrative scenes, and — most controversially — erotic couples (mithuna figures) in explicit sexual positions. The erotic sculptures constitute perhaps 10% of the total carvings but have dominated Western perception of the site. Their purpose is debated: proposed explanations include tantric ritual function, instruction for temple priests required to be celibate, apotropaic (evil-averting) power, or simply the aesthetic convention of abundance and fertility appropriate to a temple's exterior.
The temples were abandoned by the 14th century following the decline of Chandela power and the arrival of Delhi Sultanate armies. They were largely forgotten by the outside world until the 19th century — a period of abandonment that paradoxically preserved them from the modifications typically imposed on living religious sites.