128 miles (205 km) from Colombo is Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka’s first capital founded about the 4th century BC. According to the Mahavamsa, the Sinhala Buddhist chronicle, the city was a model of planning.

Precincts were set aside for huntsmen and scavengers and even heretics and foreigners. There were hostels and hospitals, separate cemeteries for high & low castes. A water supply was assured by the construction of reservoirs.

Anuradhapura was to continue for over thousand years as the national capital. But internecine struggles for the royal succession grew , and it became more and more vulnerable to the pressures of South Indian political expansion. The city was finally abandoned and the capital withdrawn to more secluded areas. But the monuments of Anuradhapura’s heyday survive, surrounded by the solemn umbrage of trees, scions of ancient parkland.