Mirror Wall

Sigiriya Rock

Climbing up the modern stairway on the west face of the rock, the visitor encounters the long and vaguely Chinese-looking "mirror wall" seen here in the lower left of the photo. Its smooth, plastered inner surface (facing away from the viewer, of course, in this photo) contains the graffiti of numerous earlier pilgrims, from the 6th to the early 14th century, who had come here to see and admire the paintings on the overhang above (next page). Almost a thousand fragments of writing have been deciphered, including love poems and other rapturous exclamations, that document hundreds of years of ancient tourism at the site.