Royal Palace of King Maha Parakramabahu

This is a majestic palace built by King Parakramabahu I (1153-1186) with seven stories and is said to have 1000 chambers. Although the main building possibly couldn't hold such a number of chambers, when you consider the whole palace complex it is thought that this number is a possibility.

Today you can see the massive walls over a meter thick going up to about 30 feet (9 meters) and the bottom half of the main stairway which led to upper floors. Inside the building, you can see parts of melted brick walls caused by intense heat when this was set on fire by Tamil invaders at the end of the Polonnaruwa era. Around the main palace, there are remains of more buildings where the ministers, soldiers, and servants lived.

Large holes in the wall probably held massive wooden structures that formed the floor of the upper levels. Even after facing such destruction by human hands and then by Mother Nature for 800 years, the plastering on these walls still remains in some places.

An architect's impression of what it would have looked like can be seen at the Polonnaruwa Museum in a form of a miniature model.