MARINA BEACH

Marina Beach  is an urban beach in the city of Chennai, India, along the Bay of Bengal, part of the Indian Ocean. The beach runs from near Fort St. George in the north to Besant Nagar in the south, a distance of 13 km (8.1 mi),making it the longest urban beach in the country and the world's second longest.

 The Marina is primarily sandy, unlike the short, rocky formations that make up the Juhu Beach in Mumbai. The average width of the beach is 300 m (980 ft)  and the width at the widest stretch is 437 m (1,434 ft). Bathing and swimming at the Marina Beach are legally prohibited because of the dangers, as the undercurrent is very turbulent. It is the most crowded beach in the country and attracts about 30,000 visitors a day during weekdays and 50,000 visitors a day during the weekends and on holidays.During summer months, about 15,000 to 20,000 people visit the beach daily.In 2010, 72 per cent of the 5,000 respondents interviewed by the Tripadvisor Survey panned the beach as being clean.
Being the city's primary area for recreation, the entire stretch features numerous statues and monuments that have come up over the years along the beach promenade, called Kamarajar Salai. While the beach stretches along the eastern side of the road, the western side is dotted with various governmental institutions and historic and stately buildings from the British rule all along its length. Victory War Memorial, a memorial for the warriors who lost their lives in the World Wars, marks the northern end of the beach. Memorials for C N Annadurai and M G Ramachandran, former Chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, are present on the northern end of the promenade known as the Anna Square. All along the length of the promenade, stone statues adorn the roadside area of the beach starting from the Triumph of Labour statue, the first statue erected in the beach, near the memorials at the Anna Square to Mahatma Gandhi statue near the lighthouse. Most statues are of national or local legends while others have symbolic significance like the Triumph of Labour statue. The statues along the promenade are:
Triumph of Labour (erected on 25 January 1959)
Thiruvalluvar
Robert Caldwell
Constanzo Beschi (Veerama Munivar) (erected on 2 January 1968)
Subramaniya Barathiyar
Subhas Chandra Bose
George Uglow Pope (erected on 2 January 1968)
Annie Besant
Bharathidasan
Kamarajar
Avvaiyar (erected on 2 January 1968)
Thanthai Periyar
Kannagi (erected in 1968/re-erected in 2006)
Swami Vivekananda (erected on 12 July 1964)
Mahatma Gandhi (erected on 14 April 1959)
On 21 July 2006, a statue of the legendary Tamil actor Sivaji Ganesan was erected at the junction of Kamarajar Salai–Dr.Radhakrishnan Salai near the lighthouse.