Dambulla cave temple

The Dambulla cave temple occupies a great granite outcrop that rises about 160 metres above the plains of central Sri Lanka, and beneath one immense overhang it holds five shrines packed with statues and painted from floor to ceiling. It is the largest and best-preserved cave temple complex in the country and still an active monastery. UNESCO listed it in 1991, and it is also known as the Golden Temple of Dambulla.

Monks were living in the caves of this area by the third and second centuries BC, and tradition credits King Valagamba (Vattagamani Abhaya) with turning them into a temple in the first century BC, in gratitude for the refuge they gave him during fifteen years of exile from Anuradhapura. A Brahmi inscription of that era over the entrance of the first cave records the foundation. Later kings kept adding: in 1190 Nissanka Malla of Polonnaruwa had dozens of statues gilded, and in the eighteenth century the Kandyan kings, above all Kirti Sri Rajasinha, repainted and restored the shrines. The white colonnaded front with its gabled entrances was added only in 1938.

Inside, roughly 150 Buddha images are joined by statues of kings and of Hindu gods, including Vishnu and Ganesha — a reminder of how closely the two traditions have lived together here. The first cave, the Cave of the Divine King, is filled by a reclining Buddha about 14 metres long, cut from the living rock, with his disciple Ananda at his feet. The second and largest, the Cave of the Great Kings, is some 52 metres wide and holds 16 standing and 40 seated Buddhas, statues of Valagamba and Nissanka Malla, a small stupa, and a crack in the ceiling from which water drips into a basin, believed to heal. About 2,100 square metres of murals cover walls and the sloping rock ceilings; most date from the eighteenth century and trace the life of the Buddha, from his mother's dream to his temptation by the demon Mara.

The walk up the rock's gentle slope is part of the visit, with views across the plain to the rock fortress of Sigiriya, about 19 km away. At dusk hundreds of swallows swoop around the cave entrances. A museum and visitor facilities have been built away from the historic caves.

Getting there

The temple is on the edge of Dambulla town, a crossroads of the Cultural Triangle about 72 km north of Kandy and 148 km north-east of Colombo. The nearest airport in a straight line, China Bay near Trincomalee (TRR), about 96 km away, has only limited domestic service; most visitors fly into Bandaranaike International Airport (CMB) near Colombo, about 140 km by road, and continue by car or by frequent buses from Colombo, which take around four hours.