Our History

Our Architecture

The original plan was to build the hotel next to Sigiriya, but to protect the cultural site, architect Geoffrey Bawa insisted on building on a ridge 11km to the southeast. This location also provided splendid views of Sigiriya and Kandalama lake or reservoir, known locally as the Kandalama tank.

Heritance Kandalama is a supreme example of Bawa’s philosophy of adapting architecture to suit the environment. The hotel is in the central dry zone of Sri Lanka so, rather than a pitched roof that allows rain to run off, it has a flat roof, which requires less material and can support vegetation.

And the building was designed to look out from, rather than be looked at, so the style is plain, minimalist and unobtrusive.

Our environment

Is it possible to build a five-star hotel with 152 rooms while causing minimal impact on an environmentally sensitive area? Many people refused to believe it was possible when the project was proposed in the early 1990s.

But Heritance Kandalama has proved that you don’t have to be small to be green. We have gone to great lengths to safeguard the delicate eco system and environment in which the hotel sits – and have won numerous awards for our efforts.

The entire hotel is built on a raised platform resting on columns, allowing rain and spring water to flow freely from the mountainside into Kandalama lake. This design also lets animals move freely underneath the hotel.

The hotel does not touch any of the water in Kandalama lake. Instead, we obtain water from deep tube wells in a sustainable manner. In addition, we harvest rain water from a maze of gutters.

We also recycle all our waste water – our recycling plant is the most sophisticated system of its kind in use by a hotel anywhere in Sri Lanka. An elaborate purification process ensures that the water coming out of the system is clean enough to use in gardening.

And we have enriched the forest cover through reforestation and conservation. We have created a conservational forest of over 200 acres. This includes part of the 50 acres of land within the hotel premises and a dedicated forest conservation of 198 acres.

See Our sustainability for more information about our environmental practices.