Temples & Shrines

Sri Lanka's cultural capital, home to the sacred Temple of the Tooth Relic.

Ancient capital with massive stupas, sacred Bo tree, and sprawling ruins.

Ruined medieval capital with palace, temples, and monuments scattered across a vast park.

Sri Lanka's energetic capital - colonial quarters, temple treasures, seafront promenades, and the island's best food.

The proud capital of Tamil Sri Lanka - grand kovils, a star fort, palmyrah groves, and legendary crab curry.

A UNESCO-listed Dutch fort town with cobblestone streets, boutiques, and ocean views.

Five golden caves filled with 153 ancient Buddha statues and stunning religious murals.

One of the world's finest natural harbours with pristine beaches and diving sites.

A ridge-top tea town with edge-of-the-world views, misty monasteries, and the gateway to Lipton's country.

Sacred mountain with a pilgrimage trail and sunrise views across the Central Highlands.

Sri Lanka's great multi-faith pilgrimage town, sacred to Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Veddas alike.

A riot of sacred colour on the Kandy–Dambulla road - one of Sri Lanka's most spectacular Hindu gopurams.

The 'City of Gems' - Sri Lanka's sapphire capital, gateway to Sinharaja and the classic Adam's Peak trail.

A famous banana-shaped bay minutes from Galle, with calm swimming, reef snorkelling, and a jungle-clad headland.

Colombo's most famous Buddhist temple, with the serene Seema Malaka pavilion floating on Beira Lake.

Sri Lanka's bird paradise - lagoons and mangroves alive with nesting waterbirds, plus uncrowded leopard country.

King Dutugemunu's great white dagoba - the most beloved stupa in Sri Lanka and a wonder of the ancient world.

An ancient lake-side temple town of great white dagobas - the classic base for Yala and Kataragama.

Anuradhapura's great northern monastery - once home to 5,000 monks and a stupa that rivalled the pyramids.

The home of Sri Lanka's spectacular devil-dance masks and traditional mask-carving workshops.

Badulla's famous 'bridal veil' waterfall, reached by a fun kilometre-long jungle path.

Polonnaruwa's supreme masterpiece - four colossal Buddhas carved from a single wall of granite.

The safari crossroads of the Cultural Triangle - a village lake, catamaran rides, and every park within reach.

Anuradhapura's rock temple of famous carvings - home of the celebrated 'Isurumuniya Lovers'.

A historic Dutch fort city at the island's southern tip - star fort, island temple, and the end of the coastal railway.

A lively fishing city near the airport, famous for its lagoon, Dutch canals, and fiery seafood.

The oldest historically documented tree on Earth - grown from the very Bo tree beneath which the Buddha awoke.

One of Sri Lanka's oldest ports - a golden beach, a busy fish harbour, and the historic Ketchimalai Mosque on the headland.

A river-mouth town crowned by the great white Kalutara Chaitya - the rare stupa you can walk inside.

The last king's ornamental sea - Kandy's mirror, ringed by a walking path and crowned by the Tooth Temple.

The stupa marking the Buddha's first visit to Sri Lanka - the island's oldest place of Buddhist worship.

A seven-terraced rock monastery with painted caves and a giant reclining Buddha - the 'little Sigiriya' of the south.

The 'Sea of Parakrama' - a 12th-century reservoir so vast it made a king's boast literal, lapping at Polonnaruwa's ruins.

A majestic 12-metre standing Buddha carved from a single granite cliff in the 5th century.

A laid-back lagoon city of Dutch forts, singing fish, and untouched east-coast beaches.

Sri Lanka's tallest lighthouse marks the island's southernmost point - next stop, Antarctica.

A 14th-century shrine whose carved wooden pillars are counted among the finest woodwork in the world.

A majestic 14th-century temple rising from bare rock, blending Buddhist shrine and Hindu devales under one soaring roof.

A Ramsar-protected river-lagoon of 64 islands, mangrove tunnels, and cinnamon islands near Balapitiya.

The most beautiful building of medieval Sri Lanka - a circular relic shrine of moonstones, guardstones, and perfect geometry.

Polonnaruwa's greatest stupa - a golden-pinnacled brick mountain in the ancient city's northern quarter.

Pettah's candy-striped marvel - a 1909 mosque so distinctive that sailors used it to recognise Colombo's harbour.

Colombo's green heart - flame trees, a golden Buddha, and the white Town Hall rising over the lawns.

A 13th-century rock citadel with Sri Lanka's most beautiful ancient staircase - Sigiriya without the crowds.

The cave monastery near Matale where the Buddhist scriptures were first written down 2,000 years ago.

Sri Lanka's oldest surviving wooden bridge - a 16th-century roofed crossing built without a single nail.

The ancient port where the sacred Bo sapling landed in 288 BC - a serene seaside temple on the Jaffna coast.

A roadside cave temple near Ella hiding a 12-metre unfinished Buddha carved into the cliff.

Claimed as the first Buddhist stupa in the world - built by seafaring merchants on a hill above the north-east coast.

A cool-climate mountain garden of roses and cloud forest beneath Hakgala rock, steeped in Ramayana legend.

The great star fort of the north - Portuguese-born, Dutch-perfected, war-scarred, and reborn as Jaffna's sunset promenade.

The 'Temple on the Hill' at Aluthgama, crowned by a 48-metre seated Buddha gazing over the west coast.

A hillside of colonial stories behind the Tooth Temple - 195 graves and a caretaker who knows them all.

Seven warm wells with a Ravana legend - Trincomalee's ancient bathing ritual, bucket by bucket.

A lake-and-beach town of literary fame - island temples, cinnamon gardens, and the childhood world of Martin Wickramasinghe.

The cliff-top abode of Shiva above Trincomalee harbour - one of the island's five ancient Ishwarams.

A colossal hilltop stupa raised for the temples drowned by the Kotmale reservoir - with tea-country views to match.

A cliff-top forest hermitage above the Kumana wilds, crowned by a rare cylindrical dagoba and vast jungle views.

A tiny park with a big spectacle - elephant herds feeding on tank grass beside the Arugam Bay road.

A perfect circle of ancient stone pillars crowning a rock - the loveliest vatadage in Sri Lanka, and the least visited.

The sacred mountain where Buddhism arrived in Sri Lanka in 247 BC - 1,840 steps to a summit of stupas and views.

One of the five ancient abodes of Shiva, tied to the Ramayana's ending - and host to a spectacular festival.

The grandest Hindu temple in Sri Lanka - golden gopurams, thunderous pujas, and a 25-day festival like no other.

The moated 12th-century capital of Parakramabahu the Great before Polonnaruwa - ruins, legends, and a princess's tower.

The cave temple where silver ore funded the great stupas - with golden Buddhas and a shrine floor of Dutch tiles.

A mysterious mountain of ruined forest monasteries, rising abruptly from the dry-zone plains near Habarana.

The Ramayana's fallen Himalayan hill above Unawatuna - jungle, hidden coves, and a white Japanese Peace Pagoda.

The most serene face in Sri Lankan art - a 4th-century meditation Buddha that consoled Nehru in prison.

The island temple of the god Devol - a shrine on its own rock off Hikkaduwa where justice is sought over the waves.

A relic stupa on the wild Mahaweli floodplain, where pilgrims and wild elephants share the sacred ground.

The holiest shrine in Sri Lanka - home of the Buddha's tooth relic and heart of the Kandyan kingdom.

A historic royal forest rising behind Kandy's Temple of the Tooth, laced with shady walking trails.

A white-sand cove with a natural swimming lagoon and the south coast's famous palm rope swing.

The hermit mountain of Polonnaruwa - two millennia of forest monks on a great rock east of the Mahaweli.

An ancient pool the size of six Olympic pools - the industrial-scale waterworks of the Abhayagiri monks.

A pink quartz mountain rising from Asia's largest ironwood forest - one of Sri Lanka's strangest, loveliest places.

The 'black water pond' - serene monastery ruins around a dark forest pool near Dambulla, with wildlife for company.

A temple on a rock above a wild beach, where Queen Viharamahadevi landed - and the gateway to Yala's coast.

A graceful small stupa ringed by vatadage pillars - the quiet sister among Anuradhapura's giants.

A serene 11-metre limestone Buddha in the forests of Moneragala - the tallest free-standing ancient statue on the island.

A 2,000-year-old temple in the dunes of Pottuvil - where east-coast tradition says a queen came ashore.

A small sacred island shared by a great Hindu kovil and one of Buddhism's holiest Sri Lankan shrines.

A mysterious stone shrine at the island's very centre, blending Buddhist and Hindu art like nowhere else.

The site of the world's worst rail disaster - memorials to the 2004 tsunami's victims beside the Galle road.

A dramatic rocky outcrop overlooking Sigiriya - stunning sunrise views without the crowds.

The northernmost tip of Sri Lanka - a lighthouse, a fishing town, and the end-of-the-island marker.

A jungle mountain of a thousand ruins near Ampara - believed to hold the ashes of Mahinda, who brought Buddhism to the island.

A brightly painted Hindu temple at Seetha Eliya, held to be the very place Sita was held captive in the Ramayana.

One of the island's five ancient abodes of Shiva, resurrected beside the lost port of Manthai near Mannar.

The 'Buddhist kovil' of Trincomalee - a rare ancient temple venerated by Sinhala and Tamil devotees alike.

A remote riverside park famed for large elephant herds and one of the island's healthiest sloth bear populations.

Home of Sri Lanka's biggest seated Buddha - 50 metres of serene concrete with a walk-through 'hell tunnel' below.

Negombo's dragon-mouth temple - walk through the jaws into halls of vivid murals and a six-metre Buddha.

A 26-metre white Buddha overlooking Kandy - an iconic modern shrine.

Colombo's beloved suburban temple - a sacred Bo tree of ancient lineage and one of the city's grandest peraheras.

The 'Golden Valley of Ceylon Tea' - a planters' world of estates, bungalows, and mist that time forgot.

The east's forgotten Solosmasthana - a vast brick stupa marking the Buddha's meditation on his final visit.

An 18th-century cave temple across the river from Kandy, holding the finest Kandyan-era murals in existence.

A lagoon village hiding Buddhist history - the island monastery where Western monasticism in Asia began.

A 14th-century stone temple on a rock summit - the South Indian-styled jewel of the Kandyan three-temples loop.

Once the third-tallest structure on Earth - a mountain of 93 million bricks raised in the 3rd century AD.

Legendary freshwater springs beside the northern sea, prized for healing baths and tied to ancient temple lore.

A sacred riverside temple near Colombo, believed to have been visited by the Buddha and adorned with celebrated murals.

The milk-white stupa of the sacred city - where tradition says the Buddha met the king of Kataragama.

A forest of 1,600 stone pillars - all that remains of a nine-storey monastery roofed in bronze.

The deep south's thermal pools - a renovated bathing garden in the scrub near Sooriyawewa, beloved by safari-goers.

The chief shrine of the god Saman, guardian of Adam's Peak - Ratnapura's great temple and its September pageant.

King Dutugemunu's first great stupa - built, the story says, to repay a forgotten chilli.

Badulla's ancient heart - one of the sixteen holiest shrines, founded on a visit by the Buddha himself.

A golden hilltop temple west of Kandy with 360° mountain views - Sri Lanka's most photogenic modern shrine.

One of Asia's largest natural rock shelters - home to 37,000-year-old prehistoric Sri Lankans.

Colombo's stupa on stilts - a harbour-mouth dagoba raised on arches so arriving ships see it first.

The 'unfinished' twin of the Avukana Buddha - a colossal rock-cut statue in deep countryside solitude.

A 2,300-year-old stupa enshrining the Buddha's forehead relic, deep in the paddy country south of Trincomalee.

Sri Lanka's holiest Catholic shrine - 400 years of pilgrimage to a jungle church that sheltered generations.

A 2,200-year-old monastery rising from the wilds of Yala - pilgrims, monks, and leopards share the rock.

Colombo's miracle church - a harbourside national shrine where every faith comes on Tuesdays.

A remote rock temple where the sacred Bo sapling rested on its journey - carved Buddhas on a wilderness outcrop.

The first stupa ever built in Sri Lanka - raised in the 3rd century BC over the Buddha's collarbone relic.

Boulder-cave hermitages of Anuradhapura's earliest monks, with inscriptions two thousand years old.

Matara's tunnel temple - a 39-metre Buddha above an underground maze of twenty thousand comic-strip murals.

Colombo's grand Dutch survivor - a 1749 church whose floor is paved with the tombstones of colonial governors.

A colossal unfinished stupa mound near Buttala - one of the largest ever attempted, wrapped in a tale of warring brothers.