Polonnaruwa: The Ancient City You Should Cycle, and the Gal Vihara

Polonnaruwa became the island's capital in the eleventh century after Anuradhapura fell to a Chola invasion, and it lasted about two hundred years. That short window matters, because it means the city was built more or less at once, to a plan, and then abandoned — which is why it is the most coherent and best-preserved of Sri Lanka's ancient capitals.

Parakramabahu I, who ruled from 1153 to 1186, is the reason most of it exists. He built a seven-storey palace, a religious quarter of extraordinary density, and the Parakrama Samudra — the Sea of Parakrama — a reservoir of 2,500 hectares that still irrigates the district today. His stated principle was that no drop of rain should reach the sea without serving people first, and the hydraulic engineering here is arguably more impressive than the architecture.

For a visitor the practical difference from Anuradhapura is scale and legibility. Anuradhapura is spread over forty square kilometres and is still an active pilgrimage city. Polonnaruwa is compact, walkable in clusters, and reads as a single place. If you have one morning for an ancient capital, this is the one.

Start at the museum by the ticket office. It is small, well laid out, and the scale models of the buildings you are about to see standing in ruins make the rest of the morning make sense.

The Royal Palace group comes first: Parakramabahu's palace, three storeys of the original seven still standing with the beam holes for the upper floors visible in the brickwork, and next to it the Council Chamber with its carved elephant frieze and stone lions.

The Quadrangle is the densest and best part. The Vatadage is a circular relic house with four seated Buddhas facing the compass points and some of the finest stone carving in the country. Around it: the Thuparama, the only building on the site with its roof intact; the Hatadage and the Atadage, both former tooth-relic temples; and the Gal Potha, a stone book nine metres long inscribed with the achievements of Nissanka Malla, who was not shy about them.

North of that, the Lankatilaka image house still has brick walls seventeen metres high framing a headless standing Buddha, and the Rankot Vihara is a 54-metre dagoba.

And then the Gal Vihara.

Four colossal Buddha figures cut from a single face of granite in the twelfth century: a seated Buddha in meditation, a smaller seated figure inside an artificial cavern, a seven-metre standing figure with its arms crossed, and a fourteen-metre reclining Buddha depicting the parinirvana.

They are, by common agreement, the finest sculpture in Sri Lanka, and the reason is not scale but competence. The stone was worked with an understanding of how granite's grain runs — the sculptors used the natural banding of the rock in the folds of the robe on the reclining figure, so the material does part of the work. The soles of the feet, the pillow under the head, the slight dip in the pillow where the head presses into it: this is fourteen metres of stone carved by someone who was paying attention.

The standing figure has been argued over for a century. The crossed arms are unusual and some scholars have suggested it is Ananda grieving at the Buddha's death rather than the Buddha himself; the current consensus leans back to the Buddha.

Shoes off on the platform, and it gets extremely hot — carry socks. Photography is fine; posing with your back to the figures is not.

Hire a bicycle. The site runs several kilometres north to south, the clusters are too far apart to walk between comfortably and too close to make driving pleasant, and the ground is dead flat. Bikes are a few dollars at the entrance and almost everyone who cycles it says it was the right call.

Entry is around USD 25 for foreign visitors, bought at the museum rather than at the site gates, in cash. Sri Lankan nationals pay a fraction. Keep the ticket — it is checked at the northern clusters.

Go early. There is very little shade between the groups, the plain is hot, and by midday cycling is unpleasant. Opening is around 7am and the first two hours are the best of the day.

Allow three to four hours to do it properly. Two hours covers the palace and the quadrangle and misses the Gal Vihara, which would be a strange way to spend the morning.

Guides wait at the ticket office. The site is poorly signed and a licensed guide is worth more here than at Sigiriya; agree a price first, around USD 15-25.

There are toilets at the museum and almost nowhere else. Carry water.

This is the question everybody asks and the answer depends on what you want.

Polonnaruwa is later, smaller, better preserved and easier to understand. It is cyclable in a morning, the sculpture is better, and it does not require any background knowledge to be impressive. If you have one visit, take this one.

Anuradhapura is older by more than a thousand years — capital from the fourth century BC — and it is a working religious city rather than a ruin. The dagobas there are still whitewashed and in use, the Sri Maha Bodhi grew from a cutting of the tree the Buddha sat under and has been tended without a break since the third century BC, and pilgrims in white outnumber tourists on any given day. It is spread over forty square kilometres and needs a full day and a guide to make sense.

The honest split: Polonnaruwa if you are interested in what was built; Anuradhapura if you are interested in what is still believed. Travellers with two days in the cultural triangle usually do Polonnaruwa. Travellers with three should do both, and put Anuradhapura second.