SIGIRIYA

The Royal Palace On The Sky…


This amazing miracle is located in Matale District in the Central Province of Sri Lanka.It is within the cultural triangle, which includes five of the seven world heritage sites in the country. The Sigiriya rock is a hardened magma plug from an extinct volcano. It stands high above the surrounding plain, visible for miles in all directions from the ground level.
This rock is a hardened magma plug from an extinct and long-eroded volcano. It stands high above the surrounding plain, visible for miles in all directions from the ground level. The rock rests on a steep mound which rises abruptly from the flat plain surrounding it. The Sigiriya rock itself rises 370 m above sea level. It is absolutely sheer on all sides, in many places overhanging the base. It is elliptical in plan and has a flat top that slopes gradually.
Sigiri rock consists of an ancient palace built by King Kashyapa during the 5th century AD. The site has the remains of an upper palace sited on the flat top of the rock, a mid-level terrace that includes the Grand Lion Gate and the mirror wall with its frescoes, the lower palace that clings to the slopes below the rock, walls and gardens that extend 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 nearly 500 such portraits, but unfortunately only 19 remain today. Beyond the fresco gallery, the pathway circles the sheer face of the rock, and is protected by a 3m high stonewall.
This wall was coated with a mirror-smooth glaze. Over 1000 years ago visitors used this to note their impressions of the women in the gallery below.



The graffiti was Marjory inscribed between the 7th and 11th Century AD. 685 of them have been deciphered and also have been published. The graffiti are a great source for the scholars to study the development of the Sinhala language and script. Steps sigiriya-stairsor some hundreds of metres out from the base of the rock. The climb to the top of the rock is made via 1200 stairs. The first 800-900 are on steep stone stairs like those in this picture.


It is a very steep climb that should be taken without hurry. The stairway takes visitors past caves and hollows, places where guards watched for intruders, a number of carved symbols, and remnants of places where early Buddhist monks (coming after the reign of the King) lived and worshipped. 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.vergins. 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. This is thus named because of its shape. Its painted ceiling is dated back to the period of King Kasyapa (5th Century AD). It is however believed, that Buddhist monks from as early as the 3rd Century BC used this cave.



Ancient Sri Lankan civilization was however, something of a flash in the pan and within a few hundred years droughts, malaria and bloody succession battles led the cities to be abandoned. The jungle closed in and the buildings fell into ruins. For five hundred years they languished beneath the ebony trees, frequented only by elephants, leopards and the occasional traveler.