ABSTRACT
Location: North Central Province, approximately eighty miles north-northeast of Colombo, on the southern edge of Sri Lanka's arid northern plains.
Description: The capital of Sri Lanka from approximately 993 until 1255, the last period in which the Sinhalese governed the entire island. Home to some of Sri Lanka's finest sculpture and architecture and modern-day site of some of its most impressive ruins. First city of the extraordinary twelfth-century king Parākramabāhu the Great.
