The earliest evidence of human habitation at Sigiriya was found from the Aligala rock shelter to the east of Sigiriya rock, indicating that the area was occupied nearly five thousand years ago during the mesolithic period.
Buddhist monastic settlements were established in the western and northern slopes of the boulder-strewn hills surrounding the Sigiriya rock, during the third century B.C. Several rock shelters or caves had been created during this period. These shelters were made under large boulders, with carved drip ledges around the cave mouths. Rock inscriptions are carved near the drip ledges on many of the shelters, recording the donation of the shelters to the Buddhist monastic order as residences. These have been made within the period between the third century B.C and the first century A.D.
While there is no designated world authority to bestow this honour upon Sigiriya- Kasyapa's fortified palace and city- it still makes an attractive marketing slogan. "The eighth wonder of the world is Sigiriya, in the Indian-ocean island of Sri Lanka."
Sigiriya has great tourism potential. The Cultural Fund hopes that there will come a day when tourists flock to the country especially to see the Lion Mountain as they would the Pyramids or the Great Wall.
The claim is not merely a boast either. Sigiriya was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. A millennium publication listing the 70 wonders of the world features Sigiriya quite high in the order.
Senake Bandaranayake, Director General of the Central Cultural Fund and Vice Chancellor and professor of Archeology of the Kelaniya University has been working on the Sigiriya Project for two decades. Now on the verge of taking up appointment as the Ambassador to France, Bandaranayake is pleased to announce that the excavation work on the site is almost completed.
"Sigiriya is one of the most important urban sites of the first millennium. The city and palace planning is very imaginative and extremely elaborate."
The site compares with other Asian wonders of the era like Ankor in Cambodia, Taxila in Pakistan and the forbidden city of Beijing. Sigiriya is one of the best-preserved sites where the layout of the buildings and gardens is still clearly evident.

In 477 A.D, prince Kasyapa seized the throne from King Dhatusena, following a coup assisted by Migara, the king’s nephew and army commander. Kasyapa, the king’s son by a non-royal consort, usurped the rightful heir, Moggallana, who fled to South India. Fearing an attack from Moggallana, Kasyapa moved the capital and his residence from the traditional capital of Anuradhapura to the more secure Sigiriya. During King Kasyapa’s reign from 477 to 495 A.D, Sigiriya was developed into a complex city and fortress. Most of the elaborate constructions on the rock summit and around it, including defensive structures, palaces and gardens, date back to this period.
Kasyapa was defeated in 495 A.D by Moggallana, who moved the capital again to Anuradhapura. Sigiriya was then turned back into a Buddhist monastery, which lasted until the thirteenth or fourteenth century. After this period, no records are found on Sigirya until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it was used as an outpost of the Kingdom of Kandy. When the kingdom ended, it was abandoned again.

Nothing in Sri Lanka captures the imagination more than a 200 meter lump of granite that rises starkly above the flat central plains about three and a half hours' drive from Colombo.
Sigiriya (say see-gih-REE-yah) has it all -- a blood-stained history full of intrigue, astonishing frescos of bare-breasted maidens painted 15 centuries ago, a wall covered in graffiti that is more than 1,000 years old and, to top it all, Asia's oldest surviving landscape garden.
Dark deeds led to the establishment of Sigiriya as the center of the ancient Sinhalese Kingdom for a period of 18 years in the late 5th Century. The reign of King Dhatusena came to an abrupt end in 477 A.D. when his throne was seized by Kasyapa, his son by a wife of unequal birth. Kasyapa's action was prompted by the fear that his younger half-brother Mogallan, who was born of the anointed queen, would take over the throne. Kasyapa was convinced that his father was hiding a cache of treasure from him, and demanded that the King reveal where this wealth was hidden. Dhatusena took the young usurper to the bund of the Kalawewa, the greatest of his irrigation works, below which lived a venerable monk who had been his teacher and companion of many years. There, the old King pointed, was the sum of all his wealth. In a fit of pique, Kasyapa ordered the old man to be walled up alive and naked in his own tomb. Meanwhile, Mogallan survived an assassination attempt by his brother and fled to India to raise an army. Paranoia, arrogance and delusions of divinity drove Kasyapa to leave the traditional Sinhalese capital of Anuradhapura and construct his palace on the peak of Sigiriya Rock, a perfect lookout which could be easily defended; a huge lion was carved out of the rock. Seven years after ascending the throne, he moved into his new home.
Visitors to the palace entered via a stone stairway that took them into the lion's mouth and through its throat -- hence Sigiriya's alternative name, "Lion Rock." Only the lion's massive paws remain today, but they indicate how gigantic the rest of the carving must have been. A new stairway has been attached to the side of the rock to allow access to the summit, enabling visitors to stroll around the ruins of the palace and gasp at the panoramic views. Two water tanks, used for bathing and drinking, still fill with rain water, but in Kasyapa's day a sophisticated pumping system was used to fill the tanks from a lake at the foot of the rock.
Sigiriya is approached from the west over a moat that encloses an elaborate water garden that runs up to the foot of the rock. A stone stairway takes visitors past caves and hollows, where early Buddhist monks lived and worshipped, to a gallery half way up the rock which is enclosed by a three-meter high wall. Large sections of the so-called Mirror Wall are still intact, and is here that graffiti artists have inscribed their neat messages, many of them more than ten centuries old and some, alas, partially obscured by the scrawled initials of modern egoists. Most of the ancient graffiti refers to the Sigiriya Maidens, who are to be found up a spiral staircase about 14 meters above the Mirror Wall gallery in a natural pocket in the rock which has been protected for centuries from the rain by an overhang. Nobody knows who painted these amazing frescoes, but the Maidens testify to a highly advanced Sinhalese civilization at a time when Europe was in the Dark Ages.
It is not known whether Kasyapa knew of the existence of the beauties hidden just below his eyrie, but what is known is that the King came to a sticky end, perhaps deservedly. In 495, his brother Mogallan at last returned from India with an army of combined Chola and Sinhalese troops behind him and Kasyapa descended from his impregnable stronghold to meet him in battle. At a crucial stage in the battle, the King's elephant balked at a hidden swamp before him and momentarily turned aside, making his troops believe he was retreating. His army broke in confusion, leaving Kasyapa defenseless. Flamboyant to the last, he drew his dagger, slashed his own throat, raised the blade high in the air and sheathed it again before falling down dead.
Sigiriya's halcyon days ended with Kasyapa's death. But the grandeur of this astonishing rock lives on.

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