Polonnaruwa Day Tour

Description

Polonnaruwa, 189km away from the Colombo International Airport was the second capital and last great capital of Sri Lanka. This medieval city owed its genesis to its strategic position. Its lavish oriental architectural magnificence, and most of its splendid ancient buildings, both religious and secular - the remains of which even today serve as stimuli to travelers around the world.UNESCO declared Polonnaruwa a world heritage site, thereby making it an infamous tourist destination in Sri Lanka. 

It is undoubtedly more spectacular with its forest background. Moreover, as the ruins are not so "ruined'', they require less effort of imagination to enable one to recast scenes of the past.

History 

In the latter half of the 7th century, king aggabodhi IV came into temporary residence at Polonnaruwa. Earlier it was named "the camp city" from 1070, and onwards, following a Chola invasion that destroyed Anuradhapura, the city came to be the capital of Sri Lanka and it continued as such until the middle of the 13th century. In 1293 Sri Lanka was taken over by the armed forces of South India abandoning Polonnaruwa to the jungle.