The three-storey Alut Maligawa is a large shrine hall displaying dozens of sitting Buddhas donated by devotees from Thailand. Its design resembles a Thai Buddhist temple, reflecting the fact that Thai monks reestablished Sri Lanka’s ordination lineage during the reign of King Kirti Sri Rajasinha.
Set on the upper two floors, the Sri Dalada Museum displays a stunning array of gifts donated by several presidents and Buddhist leaders from across the world to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. Letters and diary entries from the British era reveal the colonisers’ surprisingly respectful attitude to the tooth relic. More recent photographs reveal the significant damage caused to the temple complex by a truck bomb detonated by the LTTE in 1998.
The Alut Maligawa is located within the compound of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and accessed on the same ticket.