Anuradhapura

Anuradhapura

(206km north-east of Colombo)
Of all the magnificent early cities and capitals that Lanka boasted, Anuradhapura was the finest and most renowned. At a time when European culture was still in its infancy, here was a classical city in which flourished the arts, the humanities, hydraulic technology and, of course, Buddhism. This was no ephemeral civilization either, for it endured some 1,400 years.

The first-time visitor driving into modern Anuradhapura with its spacious roads and concrete buildings would be forgiven for thinking that this could not be the site of an ancient city, in fact one of the greatest ever. Yet a short distance from all this modernity is the impressive ruins of that classical city.
Iisn’t easy to imagine from these ruins what the city was like millennia ago, but they do reveal artistic and architectural details of exquisite beauty. The greatest structures, the dagobas, are thankfully mostly intact or restored, so that visitors can more easily appreciate the fact that the Jetavana was the world’s second mightiest mass of masonry after the pyramids at Giza.

Excavations at Anuradhapura have revealed that human settlement began here about 500BC. According to the Mahawamsa, the island’s ancient chronicle, there were three notables named Anuradha who developed the city. However, it was the first, a minister of King Vijaya, so-called father of the Sinhalese race, who established the town. It is not surprising, therefore, that the settlement became known as Anuradhapura, “The city of Anuradha”. Read more..
For more information on Anuradhupura also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anuradhapura