Dalada Maligawa. Kandy's ‘Temple of the Tooth’ housing Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relict: the tooth relic. The building of the temple was initiated in 1592 and the present building, an imposing pink-painted structure surrounded by a deep moat, was constructed mainly under Kandyan kings from 1687 to 1707 and again from 1747 to 1782. An octagonal tower in the moat was added by Sri Wickrama Rajasinha, the last king of Kandy, and houses an important collection of palm-leaf manuscripts. In the early 1990s President Premadasa added a gilded roof over the relic chamber. The temple is the centre of the Esala Perahera celebrations.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)