The on-site museum, housed in a colonial-era building near the Mahavihara complex, holds a fine collection of carvings, inscriptions, and small finds excavated from the surrounding ruins. The highlights are the moonstones — semicircular threshold slabs carved with concentric bands of animals and lotus motifs that ancient Sinhalese sculptors developed into one of their most refined art forms.
Other items worth seeing include guard-stones with their dwarf and naga figures, carved capitals from the monastic buildings, and an array of Buddhist ritual objects. A visit here makes the ruins outside far more legible, and the museum is small enough to do in under an hour. Closed on Tuesdays.