Galle

Why Visit

A fortified city built by the Portuguese and expanded by the Dutch, its ramparts and streets still lived in rather than preserved as a museum.

Inside centuries-old fort walls, cobbled lanes and colonial architecture meet the open waters of the Indian Ocean.

History

Galle had been a trading port for centuries before European contact, appearing in historical Indian Ocean and Arab trade records long before the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century. The Portuguese built the first fortifications here in 1588, but it was the Dutch, who captured the port in 1640, who rebuilt and massively expanded the fort from the 1660s onward into the largest and best-preserved European-built fortification still standing in Asia, complete with individually named bastions and a still-functioning gravity-fed sewer system. The fort passed to the British in 1796 after their takeover of Dutch possessions in Ceylon. Galle actually remained Ceylon's principal port for shipping into the 19th century, only losing that role once Colombo's artificial breakwater harbour opened in 1885 and drew shipping traffic away. The fort's lighthouse, first built in 1848 and rebuilt after a fire in 1934, has guided ships along this coast for well over a century. Galle was seriously affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which struck the coastline directly, and the old town's careful restoration since has helped it remain a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications, inscribed in 1988).