Vishnu Devalaya of the Kandy Kingdom

Maha Vishnu Devalaya stands northwest of the old royal palace in Kandy, one of the city's four principal devalayas alongside the Natha, Kataragama and Pattini shrines, all historically tied to the Royal Palace and the Temple of the Tooth Relic. The complex holds a long dig-ge hall for ritual drumming and dance, a two-storey sanctum, an open hall with timber columns, a two-storey vahalkada gateway, and a carved stone staircase. A Bo tree on the grounds carries its own shrine to the guardian deity Dedimunda. Each year the Kap Situveema, planting of the ceremonial pole that opens the Kandy Esala Perahera, is performed here.

The shrine traces to King Senarath, who built it in the seventeenth century for the deity Upulvan after the original Upulvan shrine at Devinuwara was damaged by the Portuguese. Under the later Nayakkar kings it was reinterpreted as a Vishnu shrine, reportedly because Upulvan and Vishnu shared the same dark, blue-tinged complexion in temple iconography. One source credits King Kirti Sri Rajasinha with a later reconstruction, and holds that Kandyan kings were once crowned here — neither claim independently confirmed elsewhere. Tradition also holds Vishnu as the deity charged by the Buddha with guarding the island, and the shrine is venerated by both Buddhists and Hindus, as are all four Kandyan devalayas.