Pathahewaheta Thalawa Rajamaha Viharaya

Thalawa Rajamaha Viharaya sits on a walled, raised plateau above a stream in Patha Hewaheta, a small tampita temple that remains a functioning religious site rather than a formal archaeological display. A rectangular Kandyan-style building carries a tiled roof crowned with koth finials at both gable ends, its pediments painted in red, white and blue, and its pillars carved from gammala wood — two further pillars, cut in a classical Indian style, were added later, under British rule.

Inside, a seated stone Buddha in yellow robes is flanked by standing Buddha images in red; above them the makara torana is held up by lion figures rather than the dancing girls more usual in this kind of arch. The ceiling carries a painting of the Maha Yuddha, the Great War, worked in elephant, boar and bird figures, and the walls carry the Vessantara, Sivi and Temiya Jataka stories, the ten former Buddhas, and portraits of Kosala Maha Rajjuruwo, Vishnu and Natha dressed as Kandyan royalty. Low-country painters repainted the temple's artwork in 1880.

The inner door frame is bordered in ivory, cut in a leaf pattern with divided compartments, and is said to have come from the royal palace at Hanguranketha. The temple itself is said — in a 1921 account by the colonial antiquarian J.P. Lewis — to date to the reign of Kirti Sri Rajasinha. Hanguranketha lies in a different district entirely, across the border in Nuwara Eliya.