At the southern end of the ancient city, the brick walls of the royal palace still stand to first-floor height, surrounded by the foundations of administrative buildings and audience halls. The chronicles record that the palace was seven storeys high, with a thousand rooms, and that the upper levels were built of timber on the brick base — they burned in the medieval sack of the city.
Even reduced to its lower courses, the scale of the building gives a vivid sense of twelfth-century Sinhalese royal ambition. The Audience Hall next door, with its rows of carved elephants supporting the basement, and the small Royal Baths nearby, are part of the same complex.