One of Sri Lanka’s most sacred Buddhist temples, just outside Colombo, and consistently bypassed by itineraries rushing south. The temple marks one of the Buddha’s three recorded visits to Sri Lanka, and the interior murals depicting the Jataka stories are among the finest examples of Buddhist narrative painting in the country – vivid, detailed and accumulated across centuries of renovation. The Duruthu Poya procession in January is one of the island’s great ceremonial events, drawing pilgrims who have been making this journey without interruption for two thousand years.