Dambulla is a big town, located in the Matale District, Central Province of Sri Lanka, located 148 km north-east of Colombo and 72 km north of Kandy, the Golden Rock Temple a few Kilometers south of the market town of Dambulla, is its most famous and spectacular and the temple is in a cave under a range of granite hillocks which rise 160 meters above the surrounding plains.

Major attractions of the area contain the largest and best conserved Cave Temple Complex of Sri Lanka, and the Rangiri Dambulla International Cricket Stadium.

Statues and paintings in these caves date back to the 1st century BC. But the paintings and statues were repaired and repainted in 11th, 12th, and 18th century AD. The caves in the city provided refuge to King Valagamba in his 14 yearlong exile from the Anuradhapura kingdom.
 

Dambulla Rock Temple

The temples, which give this place celebrity, are parts of a vast cavern in the west side of the rock, at the height of about three hundred and fifty feet above the plain. Whet het the cavern in which these temples are formed, is altogether natural, or only partly natural, or only partly natural and partly artificial, it is now not easy to determine. The probability is, that it is principally natural, and that man has had very little to do in excavating it. The tradition has it that some of the caves were excavated by king Vattagamani Abhaya in the first century B. C. It can be surmised that this king and his successors, in benefaction to this place had to enlarge and smoothen the caves, and cut the drip-ledge (katarama) along the rock to protect the caves from rain water