Kandy Lake

Kandy Lake, also known as Nuwara Wewa or Kiri Muhuda, was created in 1807 under King Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe, the last king of the Kandyan Kingdom, by damming and flooding the paddy fields beside the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. The project was overseen by the chief builder Deveda Moolacharya. Construction submerged a road to the Malwatte Vihara, land near the Asgiriya temple, and the Kobbekaduwa Temple near what became the lake's outer sluice. The name Kiri Muhuda, "Sea of Milk," is older than the lake itself — it belonged to a small pond already sitting in the paddy fields before the king expanded it, and the name simply carried over.

The lake is ringed by an ornamental parapet, the Walakulu Bamma or Cloud Wall, its triangular cut-outs built to hold oil lamps on festival nights. It was never finished: work stopped in 1815, when the British captured Kandy and took the king prisoner. The small island near the centre, Diyatilaka Mandapaya, was left standing after a dam built across the lake was cut away at both ends. Accounts differ on its original use — one describes it as a summer retreat for the queen and court ladies — but during the colonial period the British converted it into an ammunition magazine, and the fortress-like additions from that period remain.