Kandy is the Sinhalese soul of Sri Lanka. Perched in the foothills of the central mountains, around a calm lake and surrounded by jungle-covered hills, it was the last capital of the island's independent kings. It was the stronghold that held out against the Portuguese and the Dutch for centuries, long after the whole coast had fallen into European hands. That's why it keeps the heart of Sinhalese and Buddhist identity like no other city: its language, dances, architecture, traditions and, above all, its most sacred relic.
In the centre of the city, beside the lake, stands the Temple of the Sacred Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa). It guards what Sinhalese Buddhists consider the most revered object in the country: a tooth of the Buddha himself. For centuries, owning this relic meant having the right to rule the island. Today it's still the centre of Kandy's religious life and the reason for the Esala Perahera, one of the most spectacular processions in Asia, in which dozens of decorated elephants, dancers, drummers and fire-bearers parade through entire nights in honour of the relic.
This guide helps you get the most out of Kandy in practical terms. It covers how to visit the Temple of the Tooth and when to see the puja ceremony, where to watch Kandyan dance, how to reach the superb Peradeniya Botanical Gardens and the temples in the surrounding area, and how to catch the legendary mountain train to the tea country of Nuwara Eliya and Ella. Kandy is the perfect hinge for a trip around the island: the place where the history of the Sinhalese kings, Buddhist spirituality and the beauty of the mountains all come together in one city.
Kandy was the last capital of Sri Lanka's independent kingdom. The city became a centre of power in the mountainous interior around the 15th century, and it and its kingdom became the refuge of Sinhalese sovereignty as the European powers (the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British) took over the coast. Protected by mountains and jungle, the Kingdom of Kandy resisted every attempt at conquest for more than three centuries. More than one expedition managed to take and burn the city but failed to subdue the kingdom. Possession of the Buddha's tooth relic gave its kings a sacred legitimacy. In the end, weakened by internal conflict between the king and the nobility, the kingdom fell to the British in 1815 through the so-called Kandyan Convention, ending more than two thousand years of Sinhalese monarchy. Under British rule a major rebellion broke out in 1817-1818 and was harshly suppressed. Today Kandy keeps its Temple of the Tooth, its lake (built by the last king), its dance and its great procession, and it's a World Heritage Site as the 'Sacred City of Kandy'. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The mountainous interior: Kandy, the last capital of the Sinhalese kingdom and home of the Tooth of the Buddha; Nuwara Eliya, the tea country's 'Little England'; and Ella, among plantations and the colonial railway.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kandy was born of geography and the instinct to survive. After the fall of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, the centre of Sinhalese power gradually withdrew towards the southwest of the island to escape invasions from the north. In the mountains of the interior it found a natural refuge that was almost impregnable. Ringed by mountain ranges, dense jungle, rivers and gorges, the Kandy region was a natural fortress, hard to reach and easy to defend. There, around the 15th century, a kingdom took shape that would become the last bastion of Sinhalese sovereignty.
The name 'Kandy' is a European corruption of 'Kanda Uda Rata' (the land of the mountains) or 'Senkadagala', the city's traditional name. It sits at about 500 metres above sea level, around a valley where the lake would later be built, which gave it a cooler climate than the lowlands and an excellent strategic position. While the European powers began prowling the island's coasts in search of cinnamon and trade routes, a kingdom was taking root in the mountainous interior that would hold out for more than three centuries.
What gave Kandy its sacred aura and its legitimacy was not just its geography, but an object: the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Since ancient times, people in Sri Lanka had believed that whoever held the sacred tooth had the rightful claim to rule the island. The relic had travelled with each successive Sinhalese capital, and when power retreated into the mountains, the tooth went with it. Kandy thus became the guardian of the most revered relic in Sinhalese Buddhism, and its king became the protector of the faith. Political and religious power were fused together in the city of the mountains.
Above all, the story of the Kingdom of Kandy is an epic of resistance. First the Portuguese (16th century) and then the Dutch (17th century) captured the coastal strongholds one by one —Colombo, Galle, Jaffna, Negombo— and took control of the cinnamon trade, yet the Kingdom of Kandy stayed independent in its mountain stronghold. The Kandyan kings shrewdly played one European power off against another: they allied with the Dutch to drive out the Portuguese, then resisted the Dutch themselves when they tried to push into the interior.
The mountains and the jungle were their best allies. More than once, European armies managed to break into the kingdom and even take and burn the city of Kandy itself, whose inhabitants, as a deliberate tactic, would abandon it and withdraw into the mountains. But time and again the invading troops, worn down by ambushes, tropical diseases, hunger and hostile terrain, had to pull back without having subdued the kingdom. The most famous defeat of this kind was suffered by the Portuguese, and the Dutch also learned to respect the limits of the land of the mountains.
During those centuries of isolation and resistance, Kandy became the keeper of a 'pure' Sinhalese culture, less influenced by the European presence than the coastal lowlands. This is where Kandyan architecture (with its tiled roofs, carved wood and undulating walls), Kandyan dance tied to the rituals of court and temple, goldsmithing, drumming and Buddhist traditions were preserved and flourished. Curiously, in its final period, the throne of Kandy passed to a dynasty of Tamil origin from South India, the Nayakkars, who fully embraced Sinhalese Buddhist culture and were the island's last kings.
The kingdom that had held out against the Portuguese and the Dutch for more than three centuries finally fell, not so much by force of arms as through its own internal divisions. By the early 19th century, the British had pushed the Dutch out of control of Ceylon's coasts and were eager to complete their conquest of the island with the independent kingdom in the interior. The last king of Kandy, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, of the Nayakkar dynasty, ruled in an increasingly despotic way and clashed with the powerful Kandyan nobility, the traditional chiefs who shared power with the crown.
That conflict between the king and his nobles was the crack the British exploited. In 1815, with the support of much of the Kandyan aristocracy, who were unhappy with the monarch, British troops entered Kandy with almost no resistance. The king was captured and sent into exile in India, where he died. That same year the Kandyan Convention was signed, a treaty under which the Kandyan chiefs ceded the kingdom's sovereignty to the British Crown in exchange for guarantees that their privileges, their laws and, above all, the Buddhist religion and the tooth relic would be respected.
It was a hugely significant moment: with the fall of Kandy in 1815, for the first time in history the whole island of Sri Lanka came under a single power, and that power was foreign. More than two thousand years of independent Sinhalese monarchy came to an end, an exceptional dynastic continuity by world standards. The lost independence would not be regained until 1948. The Kandyans, who soon felt betrayed by Britain's broken promises, rose up in a great rebellion in 1817-1818, which was harshly crushed. The dream of the last Sinhalese kingdom was over.
Although the kingdom fell, Kandy's sacred soul survived, and it is still alive today: the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. Kept in the Temple of the Tooth (Sri Dalada Maligawa), the shrine-palace beside the lake, the relic is the most revered object in Sinhalese Buddhism. Tradition says the tooth was rescued from the Buddha's funeral pyre in India and brought to the island in the 4th century AD, hidden, according to legend, in a princess's hair. From then on it travelled with the Sinhalese capitals as a symbol of legitimate power, until it found its permanent home in Kandy.
Devotion to the relic shapes the city's religious life. Three times a day, the puja ceremony is held, with drums and flutes, before the chamber where the tooth is kept (it is not shown directly: it rests inside a series of gold stupa-shaped caskets). But the big moment of the year is the Esala Perahera, one of the most spectacular religious processions in the world. For about ten days in July or August, on the nights leading up to the full moon, dozens of elephants draped in embroidered cloth and lights parade through the streets of Kandy in honour of the relic, alongside Kandyan dancers, drummers, torchbearers, whip-crackers and dignitaries. The lead elephant, the 'tusker', carries a replica of the tooth casket. It is an overwhelming spectacle, a direct heir to the court rituals of the old kingdom.
That ritual continuity —the daily puja ceremony, the great annual procession, Kandyan dance and music— makes Kandy a place where the past is not just memory but living practice. The kings are gone, but the relic that legitimised their power is still venerated by crowds, and the traditions that flourished under the independent kingdom remain an essential part of Sinhalese identity.
Modern Kandy is Sri Lanka's second city and its undisputed cultural and spiritual capital. In 1988, UNESCO inscribed the 'Sacred City of Kandy' on the World Heritage List, recognising its value as the last capital of the Sinhalese kingdom and as a living centre of Buddhism, with the Temple of the Tooth at its heart. The city still has its lake —the work of the last king, Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, completed shortly before the kingdom fell—, its Kandyan architecture, its temples and its mountain atmosphere.
But Kandy is not a museum city: it is a bustling place, with traffic, shops, universities and an intense pace of life, wedged between green hills. Around the historic core spread the modern city, the markets, the hillside neighbourhoods and nearby gems such as the splendid Peradeniya Botanical Gardens —descended from an old royal garden and laid out by the British— or the exquisite medieval temples of Gadaladeniya, Lankatilaka and Embekka, famous for their wood carvings. From a hilltop, the great white Buddha of Bahirawakanda watches over the city.
For travellers, Kandy is an essential stop and also a perfect geographical hinge: this is where the Cultural Triangle ends and the tea highlands begin, and its station is the starting point of the legendary mountain train to Nuwara Eliya and Ella, one of the most beautiful journeys in the world. Walking along the lakeside at sunset, with the Temple of the Tooth reflected in the water and the sound of the puja drums drifting through the hills, is a glimpse into the very heart of Sri Lanka's identity: the city that, protected by its mountains, kept the last flame of Sinhalese sovereignty alive for three centuries, and that still guards, with the same devotion as ever, the sacred relic that was its reason for being.
