Fort, Colombo

Fort, Colombo, Sri Lanka (3 September, 2005)


Fort is a district in downtown Colombo. It should be written Fort, not the Fort. And what's more, you cannot find a fort here. The old fortifications which were erected by the Dutch (who built on the original fortifications left by the Portuguese) were demolished by the British (the same way they demolished the Malacca Fort, I suppose).

When I visited Colombo with a small group of AsiaExplorers members, I had the opportunity to explore Fort. However, there were many places which were out-of-bounds to photography, hence there isn't much that I can show you about this area. I was quite surprise by the sensitivity to tourists taking photographs. Even at the hotel where we stayed, the Galadari Hotel, we could only aim our cameras at the hotel, and not at any other direction. That because the Galadari faces the Presidential Secretariat Building, which is off-limits to photography.

YMBA Building, another view (3 September, 2005)


Some of the most significant buildings in Colombo are in Fort, and hence, I was unable to photograph them. A major landmark was the Lighthouse Clock Tower. While not particularly striking in design, this clock tower at Lower Chatham Street stands in a neighbourhood that has suffered bomb blasts.

Speaking of bomb blasts, Fort district is particularly prone to it. And, to my astonishment, Galadari Hotel as well as the nearby Hotel Inter Continental have been bombed before. I have been to places where security was also tight, like Kashmir, but what we have at Fort takes it to ridiculous proportions.

There are many beautiful buildings in Fort. One of the most prominent one, which I am allowed to photograph, is the YMBA Building, also called Sir Cyril de Zoysa Building, belonging to the Young Men Buddhist Association.

Fort, downtown Colombo (3 September, 2005)


Heritage building along Sir Baron D.B. Jayatilaka Mawatha in Fort, Colombo (3 September, 2005)

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Thanks for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye. My hobby is to research information about places, and share the information with people on this website. I started this website on 5 January 2003, and since then, have written about over 20,000 places, mostly in Malaysia and Singapore.

Please use the information on this page as guidance only. While I try my best to provide you information that is as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors. Also, as I might not be able to update some information on time, some of these pages may contain outdated information.