Colombo

Why Visit

The island's commercial capital, where colonial-era streets, markets and a modern skyline meet along the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka's capital blends colonial-era streets with a fast-moving skyline, offering a first and last impression of the island in motion.

History

Colombo has been a port of some significance for over a thousand years, known to Arab traders well before European contact for its position on Indian Ocean shipping routes. The Portuguese built a fort here in 1517, drawn by the cinnamon trade that grew wild along this coast; the Dutch took the port in 1656 and expanded it further; and the British seized it in 1796, later making it the capital of British Ceylon in 1815 after Kandy's fall ended the last independent Sinhalese kingdom. Galle Face Green, the long seafront esplanade near Fort, began as an open space cleared by the Dutch for defensive visibility and was later landscaped by the British into a public promenade and cricket ground. The National Museum was founded in 1877 under British governor William Gregory, and the Pettah district's grid of specialty bazaar streets — one for hardware, another for spices, another for textiles — still reflects trading patterns set up under colonial rule. Colombo remained the capital when Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, and its old Fort and Pettah districts still carry layers of Portuguese, Dutch, British and South Asian trading history beneath the modern skyline.