Koneswaram Temple
— — the cliff the ocean cannot reach.
Not only on a wall.
“A Shiva temple on the edge of Swami Rock, a sheer headland above the Indian Ocean on Sri Lanka's eastern coast. The Portuguese pulled the old shrine down in 1624 and rolled the stones into the sea; divers still find pieces of it on the seabed below. The temple standing now was rebuilt across the 1950s and 60s on the same ground. The cliff drops about a hundred and thirty metres straight to the water, and the priests open the doors before sunrise. from the studio
Koneswaram Temple, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Koneswaram sits on Swami Rock, a promontory roughly 130 metres above the Indian Ocean on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka, inside the old fort precincts of Trincomalee. The site is one of the Pancha Ishwarams, five coastal Shiva temples Tamil tradition places at the edges of the island. The Portuguese destroyed the medieval complex in 1624 and the present temple was rebuilt across the 1950s. The headland looks out over one of the deepest natural harbours in the world, the same anchorage British and Dutch fleets fought over for two centuries.
The cliff is metamorphic gneiss, the same hard rock that gives Trincomalee harbour its abrupt depth. When Constantino de Sá de Noronha had the medieval temple pulled down in 1624 his masons rolled the carved blocks off the headland into the water. Sri Lankan navy divers in the 1950s recovered fragments, including a Pallava-period lingam, from the sea floor below the rock. The current temple, painted in the deep ochres and whites of South Indian Shaivite practice, was rebuilt on the original platform with a new gopuram looking inland toward Fort Frederick.
Entry to the temple is through Fort Frederick, the old British garrison still active as a Sri Lankan army base, so visitors pass a checkpoint at the gate. Doors open before dawn for the first puja and again in the evening; shoes come off at the inner courtyard and shoulders stay covered. The headland beyond the temple is called Lover's Leap, a viewpoint roughly a hundred and thirty metres above the surf. Spotted deer wander the fort grounds. The town of Trincomalee lies just below the rock, with its fishing harbour and the long crescent of Uppuveli beach a few kilometres north.