Aerial view

Path way

The Royal Gardens

Boulder

Close up

Lion's Paw

Up to Sigiriya

Frescos

Well preserved wall paintings

More 2000 years old paintings

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Ancient city of Sigiriya (“The Lion Rock”), probably the Eighth Wonder of the World

Sigiriya should have been recognised as one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, long ago, and there is now a proposal to name it as the Eighth Wonder of the world.

One of world’s major archaeological sites, Sigiriya presents a unique concentration of fifth century urban planning, architecture, gardening, engineering, hydraulic technology and art. This ancient city is the best-preserved city centre in Asia in the first millennium. “The Lion Rock”, the gardens and the pockets of paintings surviving on the rock face are the centres of attraction in this site, which stands at the threshold of being declared as the 8th wonder of the world. An array of galleries and staircases emerging from the mouth of a prodigious lion constructed of bricks and plaster provides access to the site. According to historians the mountain city, Sigiriya was the capital city, according to the historians built by parricidal King Kasyapa who reigned from 477-495 AD. The ruins of the city lie on the steep slopes and at the summit of a granite peak standing some 370 m high. The rock was transformed into a recumbent lion, which dominates the jungle from all sides.

Sigiriya, the best preserved city centre in Asia

Sri Lanka's ancient architectural tradition and culture is well represent at Sigiriya, the best preserved city centre in Asia from the first millennium, with its combination of buildings and gardens with their trees, pathways, water gardens, the fusion of symmetrical and asymmetrical elements, well constructed fortifications, use of varying levels and of axial and radial planning. This royal citadel of ancient fame from the days of Sri Lanka's memorable past. Even the present day engineering experts are amazed with the sophisticated engineering architecture and city planning that was constricted at Sigiriya

Sigiriya, lies 169 kms away from Colombo is in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka. It is only about 3 ½ hours drive from Colombo, or even less, if you decide to drive direct from the airport.

The Sigiriya Village is the nearest tourist hotel to Sigiriya. There is also a Rest House run by the Hotels Corporation of Sri Lanka. Sigirya is also in close proximity to world renowned Kandalama Hotel. Culture Club, Habarana Lodge and Habarana Village are the other popular hotels in close nearness to Sigiriya.

Climbing Sigiriya

The best time to climb the Sigiriya rock is early morning, about 6.30 am as the gates open. This enables you to climb the rock before the heat of the sun gets to you and before the crowds arrive.

Before climbing, take a minute to study the gigantic paws of the Lion and try to envisage that you would be entering its mouth to climb up to the summit.

From the summit of the rock, you can see the once magnificent royal pool, the throne, ruins of the once majestic palace, walk ways and ancient exotic gardens.

Pidurangala Rock which is situated to the North of the Sigiriya, where a Buddhist monastery and cave temples are found and near the summit one of the largest reclining Buddha statues made out of brick and mortar. To South East is what remains of Sigiri Maha Weva, and in the South the Mapagala Rock, which would have been a fortress long before Kasyapa built his city.

To the East Sigiriya is the yet uncleared, unexcavated Eastern Precinct, yet to reveal all the mysteries hidden under the soil. On the West is the breathtaking view at Sigiriya. You can see the entire Garden, its perfect equilibrium and the planning that had gone into making it. Try to visualise what the great King, Kasyapa would have been looking at, when the garden was well maintained.

When you come down from the rock, you return through a passage between the rock and a brick wall. You would observe that most people hurry through the passage. Instead, pause for a moment, look at the brick wall a little closely, and you will find that it still retains the mirror like shine that it would have once had, 1500 years ago, when it was called the ‘Mirror Wall’ and poems had been written about it. Examine the wall a little more and you could identify the now fading graffiti, and the caretakers would be able to show a few lines that could still be clearly read.At the end of the passage is a spiral staircase leading up to one of the remaining pockets of Sigiri frescoes. These frescoes is what you have seen in any article about Sigiriya, and in hotel brochures, wood carvings and batiks. Try to look at the paintings closely and keep them in mind till you get down to the garden. The other pocket is in a rock depression further up and access is from the west side of the summit. Descend the steps to the South from the mirror wall and you come to the Cobra Hood cave, look at it from a distance and you can see the top of the cave, which really looks like the hood of a cobra. Then study the paining on the roof of the cave.

There are other caves, which had been used long before Kasyapa's time, by Buddhist monks, and also the throne, and what remains of the drains and conduits. All the step like markings that you see on the boulders in this garden would once have been the base for the brick walls, that rose from the boulders, to support tiled roofs for numerous buildings. It is not easy to imagine what it would have looked like, with all the building in a perfect blend with the boulders and the massive rock towering above. Some of the caves also have a few patches of plaster with traces of paintings.Look back at the rock from here, over the boulder garden and the Terraced garden and see the Mirror Wall. Above the Mirror wall, look carefully for the signs of a drip-ledge more than half way up the rock, and identify the entire area from this ledge down to the mirror wall. try to imaging this entire rock face as one huge painting, for that is what it would have been if you had been there 1500 years ago. Then look around you, at the pavilions, where the ladies of the palace would be playing and swimming in the pools.Then you enter the Water garden. To the north is the Octagonal Pond, where perhaps the king enjoyed his bath. Then the pathway leads to the fountains, which would be active during the rainy season, then the summer palace surrounded by water. There would have been roofed pavilions around the larger pools. Then the Miniature Water Garden, where once water would have been slowly flowing over pebbles, with its own soothing music and the coolness for the occupants in the pavilions in the centre.

You leave the garden across the moat, and visit the museum, where you could see the terracotta suvenirs, which would have been for sale to visitors like you over a 1000 years ago. Then all the other artefacts and findings from the Sigiriya excavations, including the findings from the urn burial sites a few miles away.If you are visiting Sigiriya, please do not allow your tour operators or guides to rush you through all this magnificence. Be prepared to spend one whole day, walking around the Sigiriya gardens, the newly laid out herbal garden. Walk to the northern corner of the western moat and look to the south down the moat, and see how it had been made in line with the summit of a far away hill.Visit the Mapagala Rock to the South of Sigiriya, the ancient fort and walk upto what is left of the tank bund. Travel a little distance down the road from Sigiriya, and on the left is what is left of an ancient dagoba.Walk into the jungle from here, and you are inside what would once have been a Monastery with over a 1000 young monks. Here and there you will find a few stone pillars and steps and mounds of rubble.Further down the road, on a small hill is the Potana cave, where skeletal remains and a midden of several thousand years age had been found.

The Sigiriya complex consists of the elegant central rock, rising 200 meters above the surrounding plain, and the two rectangular precincts on the east (100 hectares) and the west (50 hectares), surrounded by two moats and three fortifications.Ground PlanThe Sigiriya city ground plan is based on a clear-cut square module. The layout extends outwards from co-ordinates at the centre of the palace complex at the summit, with the eastern and western axis directly aligned to it. The water garden, moats and ramparts are based on an ‘echo plan’ duplicating the layout and design on either side. Even today this city displays its skeletal layout and significant features. 3 km from east to west and 1 km from north to south it displays the grandeur and complexity of urban-planning in 5th century Sri Lanka.

Elegant Lion staircase

The most elegant and the significant feature of the Rock is the Lion staircase leading to the palace garden on the summit. According to historians and the ideas described in some of the graffiti, this Lion staircase could be visualised as a gigantic figure towering majestically against the granite cliff, facing north, bright coloured, and awe-inspiring. Through the open mouth of the Lion had led the covered staircase built of bricks and timber and a tiled roof. All that remains now are the two colossal paws and a mass of brick masonry that surround the ancient limestone steps and the cuts and groves on the rock face give an idea of the size and shape of the lion figure. Though traces of plaster and pigments occur all over this area, there are only two pockets of paintings surviving in the depressions of the rock face, about a 100 meters above the ground level. These beautiful paintings represent the earliest surviving examples of a Sri Lanka school of classical realism, already fully evolved by the 5th century, when these paintings had been made. The ladies depicted in the paintings have been variously identified as Apsaras (heavenly maidens), as ladies of Kasyapa’s court and as Lightening Princess and Cloud Damsels.John Still in 1907 had observed that; "The whole face of the hill appears to have been a gigantic picture gallery... the largest picture in the world perhaps".The paintings would have covered most of the western face of the rock, covering an area 140 meters long and 40 meters high. There are references in the Graffiti to 500 ladies

They would have been a breath-taking sight, when seen from the water garden below.There are also remains of paintings in some of the caves at the foot of the rock. Of special significance is the painting on the roof of the Cobra Hood Cave. The cave with its unique shape dates from the pre-christian era. The painting combines geometrical shapes and motifs with a free and complex rendering of characteristic volute or whorl motifs. It is nothing less than a masterpiece of expressionist painting.

The Royal Gardens

IN THE WESTERN PRECINCT The gateway to the western precinct lies across the inner moat. It had an elaborate gate-house made of timber and brick with a tiled roof. The moat is perfectly aligned with a mountain peak in the distanceOnly the southern side of the garden has been excavated, leaving the identical northern half for the archaeologist of the future. In the entire Sigiri-Bim, over 200 village tanks and rural sites have been investigated. The water gardens of the western precinct are symmetrically planned, while the boulder garden at a higher level is asymmetrically planned. The water garden displays one of the worlds most sophisticated hydraulic technologies, dating from the Early Historic Period.This shows an interconnection of macro- and micro-hydraulics to provide for domestic horticultural and agricultural needs, surface drainage and erosion control, ornamental and recreational water courses and retaining structures and also cooling systems.The Macro system consisted of the Sigiri Maha weva, the manmade lake with a 12 km dam, running south from the base of the rock, a series of moats, two on the west and one on the east fed from the lake. At micro level are, the water control and the water retaining systems at the summit of the rock and at various levels with horizontal and vertical drains cut in to the rock and underground conduits made of cylindrical terracotta pipes.

The Water Gardens

The miniature water garden just inside the inner wall of the western precinct, consists of water pavilions, pools, cisterns, courtyards, conduits and water courses. The pebbled or marbled water-surrounds covered by shallow slowly moving water would have served as cooling devices with an aesthetic appeal with visual and sound effects, which could be visualised by a visitor who could spend a little time.The largest water garden has a central island surrounded by water and linked to the main precinct by cardinally-oriented causways. This was created 5 centuries before those at Angkor in Cambodia or Mughal gardens in India. The central island would have been occupied by a large pavilion.The water is in four L-shaped pools, connected by underground water conduits at varying depths, to provide different water levels. The pool on the south-west, is divided into a large bathing pool, with a corbelled tunnel and steps leading down into it.

The other pool is smaller with a central boulder on which was a brick-built pavilion. The fountain garden is a narrow precinct on two levels. Western half has two long and deep pools, with shallow serpentine streams draining into the pools. These had been paved with marble slabs. These streams display the fountains, which have been made from circular limestone plates with symmetrical perforations, which are fed by underground water conduits and operate by gravity and pressure. There are two shallow limestone cisterns which would have served as storage and pressure chambers for the fountains. These fountains are still active during the rainy season from November to January.On either side of the fountains are four large moated islands , oriented north-south, cutting across the central axis of the water garden. This too shows the symmetrical repetition.

The flattened surfaces of the islands were meant for the Summer Palaces or ‘water pavilions’. Access to the pavilions were across bridges cut into the surface rock.The Octagonal pond is at a point where the water garden and the boulder garden meet, a still higher level from the rest of the water garden. It is at the base of a towering boulder. There is a raised podium and a drip ledge, which would have formed the bathing pavilion . The pond is surrounded by a wide terrace also octagonal.

The Boulder Gardens

The boulder garden at a higher level from the symmetrical water garden is a totally different organic or asymmetrical concept, with winding pathways, natural boulders. Almost every rock and boulder in this garden must have had a building of brick and timber. It also has the Cistern Rock which has a large cistern made of huge slabs of granite. There is also the Audience Hall rock, with a 5 metre long throne carved out of the rockThe entrance to the inner citadel (15 hectares) is made of a massive brick and stone wall, which forms a dramatic backdrop to the water garden and to the rock and the palace on the summit towards the east of it. The wall runs from the Octagonal pond to the bastion on the south-east, which is formed of wide brick walls linking a series of boulders surrounding a cave pavilion with a rock-cut throne.

The Terrace Gardens

The Terrace Garden at the base of the rock is fashioned out of the natural hill , made with rubbled retaining walls, each terrace running in a concentric circle around the rock, each rising above the other. The Palace garden on the summit was the domestic garden with its terraces and rock cut pools.

The Story of Sigiriya

Sigiriya was no mere fortress, gloomy and forbidding. At the brief height of its glory-it was a royal citadel for more than 18 years, from 477 to 495 A.D. and one of the loveliest that have graced this land. There are many interpretations of the Sigiriya period, history replete with legend, love and betrayal. But one story remains, the story of Kaspaya (477-495 A.D.) its creator, King with an artist's soul. Bards have written about him and plays and film have tired to capture his personality.

Kasyapa left Anuradhapura and built for himself at Sigiriya, a palace and city modelled on the mythical abode of "Kuvera" God of Wealth. He gave form to his dreams of grandeur. Eighteen years later, his half-brother Moggallan challenged him with an army. By one of those momentary mistake of judgement that changes the course of history. Kasyapa thought he was alone in battle, raised his dagger and slew himself.

In a sheltered pocket on the western face of the Sigiriya rock, approached by a spiral stairway, are the famous frescoes. Epigraphical evidenced refers to the existence of 500 such portraits, but only 19 remain today.

On the western and northern sides of the steep rock face runs a gallery or pathway which provides access to the seemingly inaccessible summit.Shielding this pathway is a 9 1/2 ft. plaster wall, so highly polished, that even today, after fifteen centuries of exposure to sun, wind and rain, one can see one's reflection in it. Hence the name "Mirror Wall". On the polished surface are the Sigiri Graffit recorded by processions of visitors to the rock in the past.

The summit of the rock is nearly three acres in extent. The outer wall of the palace which is the main building was constructed on the very brink of the precipice. There were gardens, cisterns and ponds laid out attractively.

The pleasure garden of the western side of the rock is studded with ponds, islets, promenades and pavilions. Some underground and surface drainage systems have been discovered during excavations. The wall abutting the moat encircling the fortress is one of the most arresting features.

The History of Sigiriya

Sigiriya dates back from over 7,000 years ago, through Pre-Historic to Proto-Historic to Early Historic times, then as a rock-shelter mountain monastery from about the 3rd century BC, with caves prepared and donated by devotees to the sangha.

The garden city and the palace was built by king Kasyapa 477 - 495 AD. Then after king Kasyapa's death it was a Buddhist monastery complex upto about the 14th century. The Mahavamsa, the ancient historical record of Sri Lanka, describes King Kasyapa as a parricide, who murdered his father King Dhatusena by walling him up alive and then usurping the throne which rightfully belonged to his brother Mogallana. To escape from the armies of Mogallana, Kasyapa is said to have built his palace on the summit of Sigiriya, but Mogallana finally managed to get to Kasyapa and he committed suicide.

However, there is also another version of the Kasyapa story, related by one of the most eminent historians of Sri Lanka, Prof. Senerat Paranavitana. He claims to have deciphered the story of Sigirya, written by a monk named Ananda in the 15th century AD. This work had been inscribed on stone slabs, over which later inscriptions had been written. Till to date no other epigraphist has made a serious attempt to read the interlinear inscriptions.

The two conflicting versions have been the basis for the historical novel 'Kat Bitha' by Daya Dissanayake, published in 1998. Sigiriya is also the location for Arthur C Clerks ‘Fountains of Paradise’.

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