Rameshwaram is a temple city and the temple of Ramanathaswami is at the centre of the life of the city. This arrangement was very unique and profound in ancient Indian culture and deserves some elaboration. Right from the architecture, sculpture and surroundings, temple had many unique aspects representing the essence of Indian culture and ethos.
Sri Aurobindo has elaborated in his book - ‘The Foundations of Indian Culture’ about Indian Architecture and Sculpture. In his words, Indian temple is an altar raised to the Divine Self. How to see a temple? He explains:

“To appreciate [the] spiritual-aesthetic truth of Indian architecture, it will be best to look first at some work where there is not the complication of surroundings now often out of harmony with the building. … The  straightway here is not to detach the temple from its surroundings, but to see it in unity with the sky and low-lying landscape or with the sky and hills around and feel the thing common to both, the construction and its environment, the reality in Nature, the reality expressed in the work of art. The oneness to which this Nature aspires in her inconscient self-creation and in which she lives, the oneness to which the soul of man uplifts itself in his conscious spiritual upbuilding, his labor of aspiration here expressed in stone, and in which so upbuilt he and his work live, are the same and the soul-motive is one... There is in both a constant, subtle yet pronounced lessening from  the base towards the top, but at each stage the repetition of the same form, the same multiplicity of insistence, the same crowded fullness and indented relief, but one maintains its multiple endeavor and indication to the last, the other ends in a single sign.