Dambulla Cave Temple
Five caves, painted ceiling to floor
Dambulla Cave Temple is a complex of five caves cut into a rock overhang in central Sri Lanka, holding over 150 Buddha statues and painted murals covering roughly 2,100 square metres of ceiling and wall. In continuous religious use for more than two thousand years, it was inscribed by UNESCO in 1991.
The account
You climb for twenty minutes in full sun, past macaques that have long since worked out which bags hold food, and then step through a low doorway into cool dark and the smell of old lamp oil.
There are five caves. The first holds a reclining Buddha fourteen metres long, cut from the living rock — you can follow the stone where the figure and the cave floor are one continuous piece. The second is the largest and the most overwhelming: some fifty statues, a stupa, and a spring that drips from a fissure in the ceiling and has never been satisfactorily explained, since the water appears to move upward through the rock.
But it is the ceilings that undo people. The rock face was never levelled. The painters worked directly onto its natural contours, so the murals swell and dip with the stone, and the effect is that the images move as you walk beneath them. Roughly 2,100 square metres of it. Repainted and extended many times across two millennia, most recently and most extensively under the Kandyan kings of the eighteenth century, whose style dominates what you see now.
It has been a working temple the whole time. This is not a ruin with monks added for atmosphere — it is a monastery that happens to be very old, and the difference is audible at dawn.
In brief
- Number of caves
- five
- Statues
- over 150
- Painted surface
- approximately 2,100 square metres
- UNESCO inscription
- 1991
- Dress code
- shoulders and knees covered; shoes removed
- Region
- Matale, Central Province
- Coordinates
- 7.8567, 80.6492
Questions about Dambulla Cave Temple
How many steps are there at Dambulla Cave Temple?
- The climb from the base to the cave terrace is roughly 350 steps and takes about twenty minutes. The path is stone, partly shaded, and steep in sections. Shoes must be removed before entering the cave terrace, so the last stretch is walked barefoot on hot stone at midday.
What should you wear to Dambulla Cave Temple?
- Shoulders and knees must be covered — this is an active place of worship, and it is enforced at the entrance. Shoes are removed before the cave terrace. Carrying socks is worth it, as the stone gets genuinely hot between about eleven and three.
Can you visit Dambulla and Sigiriya on the same day?
- Yes, and most visitors do. The two sites are about twenty kilometres apart, roughly thirty minutes by road. The usual order is Sigiriya at opening time to beat the heat and the crowds, then Dambulla in the afternoon, when the caves are cool and the light through the entrances is low.
