The Satmahal Prasada is the oddity of the Quadrangle: a seven-storey stepped brick pyramid that looks entirely out of place among the round stupas and rectangular image houses of the rest of the site. Its closest parallels are at Bagan in Burma and the Sat Mahal Prasada at Tepe Wesh in Cambodia, and the building is generally taken as evidence of medieval Sinhalese connections with Southeast Asia.
Each ascending tier carries a niche with a now-eroded standing figure. The pyramid is small — about 16 metres high — but the strangeness of its profile makes it a memorable feature of the Quadrangle.