Colombo stacks two thousand years into a few square kilometres: a Kotte royal capital swallowed by suburbs, a Dutch hospital turned arcade, temples rebuilt after Portuguese demolition, and the field where Ceylon took independence in 1948.
Sri Lanka's oldest museum, opened 1877 under Governor William Gregory. The throne and crown of Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, last king of Kandy, stand here beside 9th-century bronzes, Anuradhapura stone carvings and palm-leaf manuscripts.
Buddhists date this riverside temple to the Buddha's third visit around 500 BCE. Portuguese troops razed it in 1510; the present shrine is 18th-century, its walls covered in Solias Mendis's 1930s murals of Sinhalese dynastic legend.
The overgrown heart of Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, capital of Parakramabahu VI's 15th-century kingdom. A brick image house, moat traces and rampart fragments survive from the fortress the Portuguese occupied, then abandoned in 1565.
Founded 1785, the first Buddhist temple permitted inside Colombo after two centuries of colonial restriction. It became the base of Migettuwatte Gunananda, the monk who argued down Christian missionaries at the 1873 Panadura Debate.
The 17th-century townhouse of Dutch governor Thomas van Rhee, later a hospital, post office and police station. A colonnaded courtyard holds VOC furniture, carved tombstones and coins tracing Dutch rule from 1656 to 1796.
Built 1749 on the hill the Dutch called wolves' dale, this is the oldest Protestant church still in use in Sri Lanka. The Doric cross-plan interior keeps ebony pews, a carved pulpit and governors' floor slabs moved here from Fort.
The 17th-century hospital block, Colombo's oldest surviving colonial building, anchors a walk past the 1857 Lighthouse Clock Tower, the 1930 Old Parliament and Cargills' red-brick 1906 department store on York Street.
Independence from Britain was declared on this ground on 4 February 1948. The hall, finished 1953, reproduces the Kandyan royal audience chamber in concrete, ringed by sixty carved lions, with a bronze of first PM D.S. Senanayake.
Cut entirely from South Indian granite from 1907 onward by Chettiar stonemasons, commissioned by Tamil statesman Ponnambalam Ramanathan. Nothing here is concrete — every pillar, ceiling slab and carved deity is dressed stone.
The red-and-white striped mosque completed in 1909 for Pettah's Indian Muslim traders, designed by Habibu Lebbe Saibo without formal drawings. Sailors used its towers as a harbour landmark before the port was rebuilt.
Named for the African and Malay slaves the Dutch confined on this lake island at night. Malay Muslim descendants still live around Java Lane, alongside the old Rifle Green barracks, Sri Kailawasanathan kovil and low shophouses.
Governor Thomas Maitland built this cliff-top residence in 1806 and, by local account, tunnelled from it to reach the dancer Lovina Aponsuwa. Later a British officers' retreat, it housed the 1956 crew of The Bridge on the River Kwai.