Diyathilaka Mandapaya

Diyathilaka Mandapaya occupies the small island at the centre of Kandy Lake, itself the work of King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe in the early nineteenth century. To build the lake, the king had a causeway raised across paddy fields, then had it dismantled from both ends, at the palace side and at Malwatte Vihara, leaving the intact middle section standing alone as the island that remains today.

The pavilion built on it is said to have served as a royal summer house, a retreat for the queen and the ladies of the court. The British later put the building to a harder use: they added a fortress-like parapet around it and stored ammunition there.

A local legend holds that a secret, underwater tunnel connected the island to the palace — offered by locals as tradition, not as established history. The island today is still mostly a thing seen from the lakeside, a small landscaped garden at the centre of the water rather than a stop of its own.