In conversation with Dr. Gamini Wijesuriya (PhD), Director of Conservation, Department of Archaeology (1993-2000), Special Advisor to the Director-General of ICCROM, Rome, Italy (2018-2023), Special Advisor to the Director of WHITRAP Shanghai, China.
By Ama H. Vanniarachchy, Times of Lanka
The Soul of Anuradhapura
“What exactly is Anuradhapura?” If you ask an archaeologist, they might describe a vast landscape of ancient brick foundations, carved stone pillars, stupas, and buried artifacts. But if you ask a Sri Lankan pilgrim, a Buddhist monk, or any citizen who has walked upon its white sand maluwa, they will give you a very different answer.
To millions of people, Anuradhapura is not a dead museum. It is a living sacred landscape where millions gather on special days, a heartland of Theravada Buddhism, an extraordinary engineering marvel, and an active sanctuary where worship has continued unbroken for more than 2,200 years. It is also the heartland of Sri Lankan vapi (wewa) culture, a well-known world phenomenon.
When UNESCO inscribed the Sacred City of Anuradhapura (note that it is inscribed as a sacred city) as a World Heritage Site in 1982, it recognized the Outstanding Universal Value under three specific criteria: Criteria (ii), (iii), and (vi). Crucially, Criterion (vi) honors Anuradhapura for its living association with Buddhism/ Buddhist beliefs, active monastic traditions (such as the Maha Vihara, Abhayagiriya, and Jetavanaramaya), seasonal pilgrimages (Poson, Esala, Aluth Sahal Mangallaya), and daily spiritual devotion.
However, on February 27, 2026, the National Physical Planning Department (NPPD) published an Extraordinary Gazette introducing the new Anuradhapura Sacred Area Development Plan. While presented as a modern blueprint to protect monuments and manage traffic, a careful analysis reveals that this document contains deep conceptual errors, legal backdoors, and dangerous loopholes. Instead of protecting the living soul of the sacred city, this plan treats Anuradhapura as little more than a collection of physical ruins surrounded by development zones. It fails to understand the concept of Living Heritage and ignores modern international heritage management planning principles.
To learn more about this, we contacted Dr. Gamini Wijesuriya, a globally renowned heritage management expert, an esteemed architect and archaeologist, and recipient of the ICCROM Award 2021, in recognition of his contributions to the field of cultural heritage, both in his home country of Sri Lanka and internationally, and to ICCROM’s development as an organisation.
This article breaks down the major mistakes in the 2026 Gazette to explain why concerned citizens, scholars, and spiritual leaders are deeply alarmed.
Point 1: Reducing a Living Sacred City to “Dead Brick Ruins”
The most fundamental flaw in the 2026 Gazette is what scholars call archaeological reductionism—reducing a living, complex heritage site to physical archaeological remains.
Archaeology is vital for discovering the past. But managing an ancient sacred city requires much more than excavating buried stones or fencing off brick foundations. Modern heritage management—guided by UNESCO, ICCROM, and ICOMOS—distinguishes clearly between managing “archaeological remains” and managing a “living heritage place”:
- An Archaeological Approach asks: What ancient structures remain, and how can we keep people away from damaging them?
- A Living Heritage Approach asks: What values make this place sacred, who sustains these traditions, and how can monks, pilgrims, and local communities continue their spiritual life in harmony with the environment?
The 2026 Gazette repeatedly frames the site’s significance almost entirely around “protecting archaeological values” (පුරාවිද්යා වටිනාකම්) and managing physical land. By treating the sacred area like a static archaeological park or a tourist reserve, the plan ignores the living rituals, daily offerings, chanting, and spiritual memory that give Anuradhapura its true meaning. A sacred stupa or the Sri Maha Bodhi is not merely an architectural monument to be measured; it is an active object of living worship.
Point 2: Breaking the Hydraulic-Sacred Matrix (Wewa-Vihara Civilization)
Anuradhapura’s architectural brilliance cannot be separated from its water. The city was built as a seamless hydraulic-monastic landscape where ancient reservoirs (Tissa Wewa, Abhaya Wewa, Nuwara Wewa, Bulankulama), canals (Halpanu Ela, Malwathu Oya), paddy fields, forest monasteries, and massive stupas formed a single living ecosystem.
The 2026 Gazette makes a severe mistake by treating these water bodies merely as land-use boundaries, drainage channels, or aesthetic features for “pond restoration”. It fails to recognize the hydraulic-spiritual connection thus vapi culture that defines Sinhala Buddhist civilization.
By allowing vehicle parking lots, commercial vendor zones, and road expansions near tank margins and riverbanks, the plan puts the ecological and visual purity of this ancient water network at serious risk.
Point 3: The omission of the site’s UNESCO World Heritage status—and the failure to refer to its Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)
This is a critical conceptual, procedural and to some extent legal flaw in the Gazette. When a site is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the host government assumes a binding international obligation under the World Heritage Convention to protect, conserve, and sustain the specific values (outstanding Universal Value) for which it was listed. Bypassing this framework in official planning documents undermines both local heritage protection and international compliance.
Key Deficiencies in the Gazette’s Approach
- Absence of reference to OUV: The Gazette treats the area like a conventional urban development zone rather than a heritage asset of universal significance. Without explicit reference to the OUV, the legal and regulatory provisions lack a baseline for what must be protected.
- Absence of the mandatory World Heritage requirement of demarcating boundaries covering all attributes that convey OUV and other recognised values and delineating buffer zones for property to guarantee the protection of the Outstanding Universal Value.
- Failure to Implement Value-Based Planning: Modern heritage governance requires a value-based planning approach (as outlined in UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention and ICCROM/IUCN management manuals). Development controls must stem directly from identified heritage values, rather than fitting heritage around pre-determined growth targets.
- Omission of Tangible & Intangible Attributes: The Gazette fails to map or elaborate the specific attributes—both tangible (built form, urban morphology, historic views, architectural fabric) and intangible (cultural practices, community memory, traditional livelihoods)—that convey the OUV.
- Bypassing Stakeholder & Rights-Holder Consultation: Establishing OUV attributes and management priorities requires early, structured consultation with local communities, rights-holders, domain experts, and relevant heritage authorities. The Gazette omits this essential early step in the planning sequence.)
Point 4: Dangerous Commercial Creep in the Sensitive Zone (Schedule 02)
Perhaps the most alarming legal loophole in the 2026 Gazette is found in Schedule 02 (උපලේඛනය 02), which defines allowed land uses inside the designated Sensitive Zone (සංවේදී කලාපය).
The vision statement of the Gazette promises a peaceful, green sacred environment (සුවදෙන නිල හරිත පූජා බිම). Yet, under Schedule 02, the Gazette explicitly legalizes commercial activities directly inside sensitive areas:
- Commercial guest houses and holiday homes (නිවාඩු නිකේතන) up to 10 rooms.
- Retail shops and commercial boutiques (සිල්ලර වෙළඳ සැල්) up to 25 square meters.
- Vehicle repair garages (ගරාජ්) up to 50 square meters.
- Cattle sheds (ගව හල්), veterinary clinics, and solar panel installations.
In Sri Lankan urban planning, soft limits like “only 10 rooms” or “a small 25 sq. m. shop” are infamous backdoors. Once commercial activities are granted a legal footprint on 15-perch plots, piecemeal expansions, illegal modifications, waste dumping, and noise pollution follow quickly. Allowing motor repair garages and commercial guest houses inside sensitive sacred buffer zones directly destroys the quiet, contemplative atmosphere required for a sacred site.
Point 5: Visual Pollution and the 15-Meter Height Exemption (Clause 3.4)
To protect the historic skyward views of Anuradhapura’s monumental stupas, strict building height restrictions are essential. The Gazette specifies that general building heights in Zone A should not exceed 10 meters (Ground + 1 story) and Zone B should not exceed 9 meters.
However, Clause 3.4 introduces a glaring exemption:
It grants a blanket exemption for “recognized Buddhist educational institutions / Pirivenas,” allowing building heights up to 15 meters (Ground + 3 stories / 4 levels) inside the Sensitive Zone.
While supporting monastic education is important, granting a 15-meter (4-story) height exception without requiring mandatory Visual Impact Assessments or tree-canopy line studies is a major oversight. Four-story concrete blocks rising above the tree canopy risk piercing the sacred horizons and disrupting historical sightlines toward Abhayagiriya, Ruwanweliseya, and Jetavanaramaya.
Point 6: Wall-In Security and Gated Sacred Spaces (Clause 5.1)
In Clause 5.1, the Gazette outlines proposals for physical boundary demarcations:
- Erecting a physical protective fence or wall around Ruwanweliseya (රුවන්වැලිසෑය වටා ආරක්ෂිත වැටක් ඉදි කිරීම).
- Building 6 physical entrance checkpoints/gates (පිටසුම් ද්වාර) at major access roads leading into the Sacred Area (such as Kurunegala Road, Puttalam Road, Trincomalee Road, and the Malwathu Oya bridge).
Anuradhapura has historically been an open, welcoming, and peaceful sanctuary for devotees. Encasing ancient stupas inside security fences and forcing pilgrims through gated checkpoints turns sacred movement into a bureaucratized inspection line. This security-focused approach creates physical and emotional barriers between pilgrims, monks, and the sacred stupas.
Point 7: Top-Down Bureaucracy and Community Displacement
Who gets to decide what happens to Anuradhapura? Under the 2026 Gazette, planning authority is concentrated in top-down state bodies: the National Physical Planning Department (NPPD), the Urban Development Authority (UDA), the Department of Archaeology, and local municipal councils.
At the same time, the plan mandates removing or relocating long-term residents and traditional communities located within sensitive areas.
This reveals a deep misunderstanding of Living Heritage. Traditional local families, flower vendors, hereditary temple caretakers, and service communities (rājakāriya lineages) are not eyesores to be cleared away. They are the living custodians of the site who have sustained its daily life for generations. Displacing local communities while approving commercial guest houses, tourist shuttles, and parking lots replaces living culture with commercialized tourism.
“Sri Lanka does not need to invent a new planning framework from scratch. We reliably understand that a comprehensive, heritage values-led plan for Anuradhapura was already initiated under the guidance of one of the world’s most renowned international heritage management specialists and supported by local experts. By completely disregarding this legitimate process, certain authorities have ignored global expertise and local wisdom. The 2026 Gazette must be paused immediately so that Sri Lanka can return to a genuine, expert-led heritage plan’’, concluded Dr. Wijesuriya.
Sri Lanka needs a comprehensive, heritage-led plan—one created in genuine consultation with the Maha Sangha, heritage scholars, urban ecologists, and local communities. The 2026 Gazette in its current form is deeply flawed, legally dangerous, and culturally harmful. It must be paused, critically re-evaluated, and fundamentally rewritten before permanent damage is done to the sacred heart of our nation.
Anuradhapura is one of the world’s greatest living sacred cities. It cannot be planned like an ordinary commercial town or managed like a dead ruin site.
