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Urban  form

          One of the most important aspects of the archeology of Sigiriya is that it is one of the best-preserved and most elaborate surviving urban sites in South Asia from the first millennium A.D. What we know presently about its urban from is that it consists of a series of concentric precincts, the outermost of which, not yet completely surveyed, seems to form a precise geometrical rectangle. These successive precincts are centred on the great Sigiriya rock, a massive monadnock or inselberg rising about 200 meters above the surrounding plain. It has a part-natural, part man-made, stepped plateau of about 1.5 hectares on its summit. On this plateau is located the royal palace and the immediate palace gardens.

            The palace stands about 360 metres above mean sea level and 200 metres above the surrounding plain. On the plain below, extending east and west, are two fortified precincts, 90 and 40 hectares in extent. Around the rock itself is a walled ‘citadel’ or inner royal precinct covering an area of about 15 hectares. This citadel presents an irregular, broadly elliptical plan, more or less defining the outer limits of the hill slopes around the base of the rock. This boulder-strewn hillside has been fashioned into a series of terraces, forming a terraced garden around the rock. It also incorporates rock-shelters and rock-associated pavilions which form the distinctive architecture of the boulder gardens both to the west and the east of the citadel.

The area to the west of the citadel is laid out as a symmetrically planned royal park or pleasure-garden with elaborate water-retaining structures and surface and sub-surface hydraulic systems. It is surrounded by three ramparts and two moats forming a rectangle whose inner dimensions are about 900 by 800 metres. To the east of the citadel extends the ‘eastern precinct’ or ‘inner city’ , a rectangular form whose inner precincts measure about 700 metres from east to west and 500 metres from north to south with a high earthen rampart, gateways and vestiges of a most. Out present interpretation of this area is that it represents a ceremonial precinct with no permanent structures other than a large central pavilion erected on a long, low rock outcrop. The outermost rampart of the Sigiriya complex is today a low, much eroded vestigial earthen embankment defining the extent of the still largely uninvestigated eastern residential or ‘outer city' area. This is more or less laid out as a rectangle, 1,000 by 1,500 metres, with two eastern gateways, suburban settlements beyond its northern walls, and the great man-made Sigiriya Lake to its south.

      Among the most remarkable aspects of the urban form at Sigiriya are its planning mathematics and total design concept. The plan of the city is based on a precise square module. The layout extends outward from the coordinates at the centre of the palace complex on top of the rock. The eastern and western entrances are directly aligned with the central east-west axis. The royal water-gardens and the moats and ramparts of the western precinct are based on an ‘echo’ plan, which duplicates the layout on either side of the north-south and east-west axes.

       In its total conception Sigiriya represents a brilliant combination of concepts of symmetry and symmetry and asymmetry in a deliberate interlocking of geometrical plan and natural form.

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