Dambulla Cave Temple

The Dambulla cave temple (the Golden Temple) is a complex of five natural caves converted into shrine rooms, in continuous use since around the 1st century BCE and repainted and added to under successive kings, most extensively under Kandyan-period patronage. It holds well over a hundred Buddha statues in various postures alongside extensive mural painting covering the cave ceilings and walls.

For appreciation questions, the point worth making is that Dambulla shows layered history in one place - you can see stylistic changes between older and later work within the same caves - which makes it a useful site to contrast directly against a single-period site like Sigiriya.