Place · colonial port & commercial capital · Sri Lanka
Colombo
/ˈkoləᵐbə/
Also known as Koḷam̆ba, Koḻumpu, Kalanpu, Kolamba, Kolon thota
Colombo is Sri Lanka's largest city and commercial capital, a west-coast port near the mouth of the Kelani river. Arab traders settled there from about the eighth century, Ibn Battuta knew it as Kalanpu, and the Portuguese began a fort in 1517 to control the cinnamon trade. The Dutch took it in 1656 after a long siege, and the British made it the island's capital in 1815, which it remained after independence until administrative functions moved to Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte in 1978.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 6.934, 79.843
Worth knowing
The business district is still called Fort though no rampart survives, and the crowded market quarter beside it is Pettah, from the Sinhala and Tamil words for 'outer fort'.
About the place
Placed at the city coordinates given on the Wikipedia article.
The origin of the name is debated: it is read as Kolon thota, 'port on the river Kelani', as Kola-amba-thota, 'harbour with leafy mango trees', or as an indigenous word kolamba, 'harbour'.
Connections (8)
- Site adjacencyKelaniya
Kelaniya is a suburb about ten kilometres from Colombo Fort, across the Kelani river, which forms the northern and north-eastern edge of the city of Colombo. One reading of Colombo's own name derives it from Kolon thota, 'port on the river Kelani'. The Kelaniya temple on the river bank, hallowed in Buddhist tradition by the Buddha's third visit to Lanka, flourished in the Kotte era and remains the great pilgrimage temple of the Colombo area.
- BirthplaceAnagarika Dharmapala
Anagarika Dharmapala was born Don David Hewavitarne in Colombo on 17 September 1864, into one of the richest merchant families of Ceylon, and was schooled at Kotte, Kotahena, Mutwal and the Colombo Academy. He founded the Maha Bodhi Society in Colombo in 1891 before moving its office to Calcutta, and the lay-centred Buddhism associated with him arose among Colombo's new literate middle class. A Colombo street, Anagarika Dharmapala Mawatha, is named after him.
- Traveller routeIbn Battuta
Ibn Battuta visited Sri Lanka in the fourteenth century and referred to Colombo as Kalanpu, among the earliest notices of the port under a form of its present name. By then Arab traders had been settling there since about the eighth century, drawn by a harbour that controlled much of the trade between the Sinhala kingdoms and the outside world. The city's Moor community was long believed to descend from them, though their genetics are predominantly South Indian.
- Imperial administration ofEstado da Índia — Portuguese India
The Portuguese reached Sri Lanka in 1505 and won from the Kotte king Parakramabahu VIII a trading post at Colombo for the cinnamon trade; they expelled its Muslim inhabitants and began a fort in 1517. Besieged repeatedly by the kings of Sitawaka, the garrison had to call for reinforcements from Goa, the Estado da Índia's main base. After 1593 Colombo was the capital of Portugal's coastal holdings on the island until the Dutch took it in 1656 after a long siege.
- Site withinGangaramaya Temple, Colombo
Gangaramaya stands by Beira Lake in central Colombo, on marshy land bought from three Moors and filled at great expense by the nineteenth-century shipping merchant Don Bastian de Silva Jayasuriya Goonewardane for the scholar-monk Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera. Wikipedia's Colombo article names it one of the most important temples in the city. It runs a museum, a library, a pirivena and welfare work from the same premises, and its Seema Malaka sits in the lake a few hundred metres east.
- Site withinGalle Face Green, Colombo
Galle Face Green is a five-hectare strip between Galle Road and the Indian Ocean in the heart of Colombo, the largest open space in the city. It began as the Dutch field of fire in front of Colombo Fort, was levelled for horse racing in the 1820s and given its promenade under Governor Ward in 1859. It is the site of Sri Lanka's national day celebration each 4 February, and in 2022 protesters camped on it to demand the president's resignation.
- Site withinLotus Tower, Colombo
The Lotus Tower stands in Colombo 01 on the waterfront of Beira Lake beside D. R. Wijewardene Mawatha. It was first proposed for the suburb of Peliyagoda, but the government moved it to the heart of the city, where a planned monorail and bus hub were to converge beside it. It carries broadcasting antennas for some fifty television services, thirty-five FM stations and twenty telecommunications providers, and since its opening in 2019 it has become a symbolic landmark of the city and the country.
- Site withinColombo National Museum
The Colombo National Museum stands beside Viharamahadevi Park and the Town Hall. It was founded on 1 January 1877 by Governor Sir William Gregory at the Royal Asiatic Society's urging and built by the Colombo contractor Wapchi Marikar, who also built the city's General Post Office, customs house and Galle Face Hotel. Its library, opened the same day, absorbed the Government Oriental Library of 1870 and became the island's first legal-deposit library.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Colombo", "Kelaniya", "Anagarika Dharmapala".
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