Polonnaruwa Things to Do Tips by jennifermueller

Lankatilaka Image House

Lankatilaka contains an enourmous, headless buddha statue and an interesting relief sculpture of Polonnaruwa architecture on one of the outer walls.

Address: Part of the northern group of ruins.

Visitor Centre and Museum at Polonnaruwa

We knew we couldn’t see everything in Polonnaruwa so we picked out just a few sites we really wanted to see. We started at the official Polonnaruwa Museum which was really good and had answers to a lot of the questions we had been accumulating.

There's a scale map of Polonnaruwa as it might have looked at it's peak and a great model of the Vatagage.

Cultural Triangle Fund sells a good little guide to Polonnaruwa (in several languages for Rs. 75.) and other Cultural Triangle sites in the bookshop –however, it took a silly amount of paper work – The bookshop clerk filled out a two-part detailed receipt including my name, address, and signature. When she didn’t have change, she offered to give me postcards to make up the difference, prompting a second receipt. Upon exiting the bookshop, a Cultural Triangle Fund official copied all the details from the receipts into a little book.

Tivanka Image House

As it's the most northern of the ruins at Polonnaruwa, Tivanka Image House might be easy to skip. Don't.

I felt that the frescos at Tivanka, the only Polonnaruwa frescos to survive, are far more haunting than the excellent frescos at Sigiriya (and more decently clad). Tivanka is also covered with wonderful carvings.

Galvihara

My husband spotting a postcard photo of this impressive collection of buddha images is what caused us to add Polonnaruwa to our itinerary. Don't miss it.

We visited Polonnaruwa on a Saturday so were joined by numerous Sri Lankan tourists with their families or classmates. Many were happy to provide tidbits of information and share their pride in these four impressive sculptures.

Vatagage (Circular Relic House)

The Vatagage is part of a group of ruins called the Quadrangle. There's a model in the museum of how it may have looked when Polonnaruwa was at it's peak.