The Great Staircase

1,840 ancient granite steps climbing the hill in four flights

The climb starts on the level ground below the hill and rises in four broad flights to the summit, divided by long terraces where you can stop and look back across the plain. The lower flights are wide enough to take four cars abreast — built for processions, not for solitary walkers — and shaded for much of the way by mature frangipani trees, which carpet the steps in white blossom in season.

It is the staircase, more than any one monument, that gives Mihintale its atmosphere.

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A story
The chronicler of the Mahavamsa describes the stairs as already in place by the time of King Mahadathika Mahanaga (1st century AD), who is said to have ordered them broadened to twenty paces. Most of the granite slabs you climb today are well over a thousand years old.

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