Raghurajpur Handcraft

Raghurajpur, a small village in Puri district, occupies a unique place in the cultural map of India. It is famous for its master Pattachitra painters and as the birthplace of legendary Odissi dancer Kelucharan Mohapatra. The village is inhabited by artisans producing sheer poetry on pieces of treated cloth, dried palm leaf or paper. Situated on the southern bank of river Bhargavi and surrounded by coconut, palm, mango, jackfruit groves and other tropical trees, Raghurajpur has an idyllic setting. A number of betel vines dot the nearby paddy fields. The village runs from east to west with houses arranged in two neat rows, facing each other. The outer walls of most of the houses are wonderfully decorated with mural paintings of mythological scenes from the Ramayan and the Mahabharat.
Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) selected this village to revive the ancient wall paintings of Orissa and to give this village its rightful place both in the cultural and tourist maps of the country. It was declared as a heritage village by INTACH in 2000 and became a major rural tourist destination of Orissa. It attracts thousands of domestic and foreign tourists. It is the first village to be developed as part of the rural tourism promotion project. Every year Raghurajpur hosts a spring festival in the month of February/March named as 'Basant Utsav - Parampara'. It was first organized in 1993 by State Tourism Department and Astern Zonal Cultural Centre, Kolkata. Huge crowd visits this village during this festival.