Each joint was crowned with a little gray stone of skin, and each heel was like the battered end of a club.

NEWYORKER: Naima

There are 14 dark and mossy stone chhatris, each with a square platform and stairs leading to the domed ceilings.

BBC: Orchha, a living medieval town

One face of the hill had been almost completely excavated, exposing four stone circles, each made up of a dozen or so pillars with two larger pillars in the middle.

NEWYORKER: The Sanctuary

And with each new layer of stone the air got warmer and began to smell, at first something like a laundry hamper, then more like inside the mouth of a sun-baked cadaver.

NEWYORKER: Ziggurat