Anuradhapura

Why Visit

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, home to some of the tallest brick structures built anywhere in the ancient world and the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree, grown from a cutting of the tree the Buddha sat beneath.

The island's first capital, founded over two thousand years ago, where enormous brick stupas and a sacred fig tree mark centuries of continuous Buddhist worship.

History

Anuradhapura was founded as early as the 4th century BCE and served as Sri Lanka's capital for well over a thousand years, from around 377 BCE until 1017 CE — one of the longest unbroken spans of any capital city in world history. Buddhism arrived here in the 3rd century BCE after the missionary monk Mahinda converted King Devanampiya Tissa at nearby Mihintale, and the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi — grown from a cutting of the original Bodhi tree in India under which the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment — was planted soon after, making it one of the oldest verified, continuously tended trees in the world. Successive kings built the city's great stupas, including Ruwanwelisaya and Jetavanaramaya, brick structures that once ranked among the tallest buildings on Earth, rivalled at the time only by the pyramids of Giza. The Abhayagiri and Mahavihara monasteries grew into major centres of Buddhist learning, drawing scholars from across Asia; the Chinese pilgrim monk Faxian, who visited around 412 CE, left one of the earliest outside accounts of the city, describing its monasteries and processions in detail. The city's long decline began after repeated invasions from South Indian kingdoms, culminating in the Chola conquest of 993 CE, after which the capital shifted to Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura gradually emptied, its ruins swallowed by jungle until 19th and 20th-century restoration work.