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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Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

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