Kandy is not simply a temple destination. The UNESCO-listed Sacred City occupies the eastern part of the modern city and preserves the setting of Senkadagalapura, the last capital of Sri Lanka’s Sinhala kings. UNESCO says royal patronage helped sustain Sinhala culture until British occupation in 1815. At the centre of the site’s religious and historical identity is Sri Dalada Maligawa, widely known as the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, a Buddhist pilgrimage place whose significance reaches well beyond its architecture.
The tooth relic has long been associated with political authority as well as devotion. The Central Cultural Fund explains that the relic moved with successive royal capitals and reached Kandy in 1595. Its presence linked the city, Buddhist practice and the legitimacy of the Kandyan monarchy. That history is best understood as a relationship between a sacred object, a court and a landscape: the temple was not an isolated shrine on the edge of a town but part of the royal complex and ceremonial life of the capital.
