Place · seafront promenade · Sri Lanka
Galle Face Green, Colombo
Also known as Galle Face, Gal Bokka, Colpetty Race Course
Galle Face Green is a five-hectare strip of lawn along the Indian Ocean in central Colombo, the city's largest open space. The Dutch kept the ground open as a field of fire in front of the fort against the Portuguese; Governor Sir Henry Ward laid out a seafront promenade completed in 1859, and the green hosted Ceylon's early horse races, its first golf club, first official rugby match and the first Royal–Thomian cricket match. In 2022 protesters camped here to demand the president's resignation.
- Date
- 1859–None
- Function
- Other / mixed
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 6.927, 79.844
Worth knowing
It is the site of Sri Lanka's national day celebration each 4 February, and at weekends its vendors sell cooked crabs and prawns and slices of mango with pepper and salt.
About the place
Placed at the Wikidata coordinates for the green.
Two explanations of the name are current: the Dutch fort gate that faced south towards Galle, or Gal Bokka, the Sinhala name for the rocky shore.
Connections (2)
- Site withinColombo
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 adjacencyGangaramaya Temple, Colombo
Gangaramaya's Seema Malaka, the meditation pavilion Geoffrey Bawa rebuilt on Beira Lake in 1976, lies about two kilometres south-east of Galle Face Green, and the green itself was once bounded to the north by Beira Lake and the fort ramparts. The two places show two faces of central Colombo: the colonial seafront esplanade laid out for races, golf and promenades, and the lakeside Buddhist temple founded by a nineteenth-century Colombo merchant.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Galle Face Green", "Colombo".
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