The five natural granite cave temples of Dambulla have been used as places of Buddhist worship and meditation for over 2,000 years, their interiors painted floor to ceiling in continuous cycles of iconography representing every period from the 1st century BCE to the present. More than 150 statues fill the cave spaces, several carved directly from the living rock, and the meditative atmosphere created by the combination of ancient art, devoted maintenance, and the particular quality of light filtering into the caves rewards the kind of unhurried attention that most visitors give it too little of.