Ridi Vihara

The rock temple of Ridi Vihara, in the Kurunegala country, holds among the finest of the Kandyan murals. Its upper shrine, the Uda Viharaya, was decorated under Kirti Sri Rajasinha in the eighteenth century, and the earliest of its paintings are given to the hand of Devaragampola Silvattenne Unnanse, the master of Degaldoruwa.

Founded in legend on the silver that paid for the great stupa of Anuradhapura, the temple gathers Kandyan painting, sculpture and a celebrated ivory-inlaid doorway into one of the richest interiors of the hill-country tradition. As at Degaldoruwa, the Jataka stories run along its walls in the crowded, exact manner of the age.