The last royal capital of the Sinhalese kings and Sri Lanka’s living cultural heart – a highland city set around an artificial lake and presided over by the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which has been the most important Buddhist site in the world since it first received the Buddha’s tooth in the 4th century CE. Kandy’s Kandyan cultural traditions – its dance, its ceremonial arts, its temple rituals – were specifically preserved through the colonial period as acts of cultural resistance, which gives the city’s living heritage a particular historical depth and significance.