An optical recording medium has a high hardness layer, first dielectric layer, recording layer, second dielectric layer and reflective layer. The hardness of the high hardness layer is larger than the hardness of the first dielectric layer, and the thickness of the second dielectric layer is in the range of 3 to 50 nm. Such a rewritable phase change type optical recording medium may show reduced degradation in the write-start portion and write-end portion of frequently rewritten sectors, and have good jitter characteristics.