Isipathanaramaya Temple is one of the oldest

Buddhist temple A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhism, Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat, khurul and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in B ...

s in

Colombo Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. Located in

Havelock Town Havelock Town is a neighbourhood of Colombo, Sri Lanka, part of an area zoned as ''Colombo 5''. It is located approximately 6 kilometres south of Fort (Colombo), Fort, the central business district of Colombo. Havelock City, a mixed-used developme ...

it was built in 1916 by Duenuge Disan Pedris, a wealthy merchant, in memory of his only son

Henry Pedris Duenuge Edward Henry Pedris (; 16 August 1888 – 7 July 1915) was a Ceylonese militia officer and a prominent socialite. Pedris was executed for treason by the 17th Punjab Regiment of the British Indian Army under martial law during the 1915 ...

who was

executed Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...

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officials for alleged incitement of

racial Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of va ...

riots A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The p ...

in 1915, which were proven false. The temple was constructed on a property that Pedris had purchased in 1905. The murals in the temple were painted by Maligawe Sarlis(1880-1955) in 1920-21. The murals have been described as "exuberant, theatrical recastings of the traditional subjects of Buddhist temple art, in a vivid realist style". In the late 1950s the Greenlands Road which located close to it was renamed Isipathana Mawatha and the Greenlands College that was located in close proximity was renamed Isipathana Maha Vidyalaya. In November 2016 a statue of Buddha, in a standing posture built at a cost of Rs. 4.5 million, was unveiled at the temple by

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Maithripala Sirisena Maithripala Yapa Sirisena (; ; born 3 September 1951) is a Sri Lankan politician who served as the seventh president of Sri Lanka from 9 January 2015 to 18 November 2019. Sirisena is Sri Lanka's first president from the North Central Province, S ...

References

External links

Lonely Planet review for Isipathanaramaya Temple
{{coord, 6.8888, 79.8656, display=title Buddhist temples in Colombo Tourist attractions in Colombo