Sri Lanka Attractions

Kandy

Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine, enshrining a tooth relic of the Buddha inside the former royal palace complex.

🎟 LKR 2000 (foreign)

Matale

A small, complete ancient stone temple blending Buddhist and Hindu architecture, near the geographic centre of Sri Lanka.

🎟 LKR 500 (foreign)

Sigiriya

A 5th-century royal citadel atop a 200-metre granite monolith, famous for its frescoes, mirror wall and lion-paw gateway.

🎟 LKR 9000 (foreign)

Trincomalee

A dramatic clifftop Hindu temple to Shiva on Swami Rock, high above the ocean at the tip of the Trincomalee headland.

🎟 Free

Anuradhapura

The sacred fig tree grown from a cutting of the Buddha's own Bodhi tree, said to be the oldest historically documented tree in the world.

🎟 LKR 200 (foreign)

Anuradhapura

A colossal red-brick stupa, once among the tallest structures in the ancient world, at the ruins of the Jetavana monastery.

🎟 Free

Mihintale

The mountain where Buddhism was introduced to Sri Lanka, reached by a monumental stairway past ancient stupas and monastic ruins.

🎟 LKR 500 (foreign)

Anuradhapura

A gleaming white dome-shaped stupa and one of the most sacred and revered monuments in the Buddhist world.

🎟 Free

Polonnaruwa

Four colossal Buddha images carved from a single granite wall, among the greatest masterpieces of ancient Sri Lankan sculpture.

🎟 Free

Polonnaruwa

A serene circular relic house crowning a low rock hill about 30 km north of Polonnaruwa, ringed by concentric rows of stone pillars.

🎟 LKR 500 (foreign)

Polonnaruwa

An exquisite circular relic house at the heart of the Sacred Quadrangle, regarded as the finest surviving example of vatadage architecture in Sri Lanka.

🎟 LKR 9000 (foreign)

Jaffna

Jaffna's most important Hindu temple, a golden, five-tiered Dravidian gopuram complex dedicated to the war god Murugan.

🎟 Free

Ratnapura

Sri Lanka's last major tract of primary lowland rainforest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site teeming with endemic birds, plants and wildlife.

🎟 LKR 2700 (foreign)

Galle

A UNESCO World Heritage fortified old town of Dutch ramparts, churches and cobbled lanes jutting into the Indian Ocean.

🎟 Free

Colombo

Colombo's most eclectic Buddhist temple, an eccentric treasury of relics, statues and curiosities beside Beira Lake.

🎟 LKR 300 (foreign)

Gampaha

An ancient and deeply sacred Buddhist temple believed to have been visited by the Buddha, famed for its vivid murals and the Duruthu Perahera.

🎟 LKR 200 (foreign)