Khalsa Heritage Memorial

The Khalsa Heritage Memorial is a museum of the Sikh people located in the holy town of Anandpur Sahib in the Punjab state in India. The museum celebrates 500 years of Sikh history and the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa, the scriptures written by the 10th and the last Guru, Gobind Singh, founder of the modern Sikh religion.

Located on a 75-acre site overlooking the town, the Khalsa Heritage Memorial is divided into two complexes that straddle both sides of a ravine and are connected by a bridge. The western complex, connected to the town of Anandpur Sahib, is organized around an entrance piazza and contains a 400-seat auditorium, two-storey library and temporary exhibition galleries. The eastern complex, containing permanent interpretive exhibition space, consists of two clusters of undulating galleries that evoke the fortress architecture of the region and form a dramatic skyline against the surrounding sand cliff terrain. In the direction of the Himalayan Mountains, the structures rising from the cliffs and the geometry of the roofs are the five-petal flower, the lotus, reflects the Five Virtues, a central tenet of the Sikh faith.

The exterior is made of yellow sand stone, while the toroidal cladding, to distinguish from the gilt cladding of the surrounding monuments, is in stainless steel. The most salient feature will be the Nishin e Khalsa, a steel spindle soaring 200 feet into the sky, the double-edged weapon that adorns every gurdwara and which is seen as the symbol of the Khalsa.