Why the stone citadel of Sigiriya in Sri Lanka is my wonder of the world

When I was 11, I was given the Atlas of Mysterious Places by a teacher and have been tragically obsessed ever since. It is why I have spent most of my life visiting these captivating places, while pursuing a career that gives me the excuse to do so.

The more extraordinary places you visit, the more you realise how truly incomprehensible the scale of human ingenuity and cultural innovation is. The wonder is in the unknown and the inspiration it instils towards greater learning. Perhaps that is why the “wonder” I am choosing is one I personally have more to learn about.

I will never forget my first trip to Sigiriya and climbing the near vertical rock face through the paws of a giant stone lion up to the hilltop citadel. The site consists of a palace complex atop a stone plateau that rises more than 200 metres from the plains below.

Surrounding this plateau is a carefully laid out city with moats and canals providing both defensive and architecturally elaborate features. For me, this is a site that visually embodies the essence of an impossible human creation. This stone-built city was created more than 1,500 years ago and is exceptionally well preserved – evocative wall paintings of palace life are still protected in radiant colour by vertical stone cliffs.

As is common to many ancient sites in northern Sri Lanka, the water management systems are incredibly elaborate and demonstrate the ingenious ways in which reservoir tanks, canals and stone chambers were used to control this precious resource. The management of the region’s highly variable rainfall allowed the development of beautiful landscaped gardens with different environmental conditions through each level of the city. These represent some of the earliest and best-preserved landscaped gardens in the world. The technological ingenuity of these water management systems is relevant to modern-day Sri Lanka, as increasingly unpredictable rain patterns threaten communities in this region today.

Built by King Kashyapa in the fifth century, the site had a relatively brief heyday: following his death in 495 after a battle against his brother’s army, it was abandoned as a capital. But Sigiriya isn’t a dead landscape of a foregone age; it is a living reminder of how environmental knowledge specifically tailored to the local ecology is absolutely essential. It embodies that cultural connection of beauty, practicality and material realisation that is the true wonder of a site like this.

Having first visited in the 1990s when I was working in Sri Lanka and last visiting decades later with my children, the wonder of Sigiriya continues to grow in my imagination.

Jago Cooper is director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and professor of art and archaeology at UEA