Travel Day 1112 – Colombo, SRI LANKA
Since I had focused my last two days in Colombo on the Portuguese and Dutch colonial periods, today I had to obviously follow-up with the British one…
Old British Parliament Building in Fort Colombo, Sri Lanka
The British were already well established in India and they didn’t really have an interest in Ceylon, as Sri Lanka used be called back then, when the Dutch asked them for protection and administration. After Napoleonic France had occupied the Netherlands, it had become impossible for the Dutch to administer the colony and so in 1796 the British moved in. They established their power at the former Dutch strongholds on the coast first, but eventually the British managed to conquer the entire island, including the kingdom of Kandy by 1815…
So the British were the first colonial power to assume full control of Ceylon, which was something the Portuguese and Dutch never managed to do. Since the British made Colombo their capital and they didn’t leave until 1948, when Sri Lanka was granted independence, there were obviously a lot of colonial traces left from the British area. Luckily in contrast to Kolkata where everything was completely run down, most of the British colonial buildings in Colombo were actually still in use and well maintained…
National Museum in Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo, Sri Lanka
One of the first British buildings I came across when entering the Colombo Fort area was the Old Parliament building, which had only been completed some 18 years before the British left Sri Lanka. The Old Parliament was situated right where the fort once stood, facing the ocean on one side and Galle Face Green on another. While continuing to walk through the Fort area, I found that entire streets seemed to be lined with British colonial buildings and some of them were still displaying names like Cargills (Ceylon) Limited, Lankem Plantation House, Lloyd’s Building and Grand Oriental Hotel…
When I then walked through Pettah yesterday on my quest for Dutch leftovers, I obviously found a lot British colonial architecture as well. Most notably were probably the Old City Hall from 1865 and the Fort Railway Station from 1908 which was built on re-claimed land from Beira Lake and replacing the 1864 Colombo Terminus Station. But in the end I found even more interesting British colonial leftovers in an area called Cinnamon Gardens…
British Old Town Hall in Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo
This entire area had been, as the name suggested, the gardens of cinnamon trees during the Dutch time and under British rule this area became part of the growing Colombo city. Since this area had been open land until then, everything appeared to be much more spacious than it had been in the Fort and Pettah area and there were even lots of trees and green spaces. My walk took me along Queens Road while passing by some really amazing old villas and mansions. Most notably were probably the Saifee Villa and the College House, right next to the University of Colombo, the once British built Ceylon Medical School from 1870…
But for me personally most impressive were Cinnamon Gardens’ Old Town Hall from 1928 and the 1877 National Museum which both were situated in Viharamahadevi Park, which had been established under British rule as Victoria Park, Colombo’s biggest park area. The interesting thing was that the Old Town Hall looked like a cross between the US White House and the Capitol in DC while the National Museum appeared to be even bigger than the one in Kolkata, the capital of British India. Also the exhibit was much better than the one in India and so I was at least glad that Sri Lankans were different from Indians in that sense that they actually knew what maintenance and preservation was, even it meant preserving reminders of British colonial rule…
Find all Colombo Photos here.
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