Galle Fort
Interesting facts
- The waters of Galle harbour hide more than 21 historic shipwreck sites, which led to a maritime archaeology centre opening inside the fort in 1997.
- A windmill on Triton Bastion once pumped seawater up to sprinkle the town's dusty streets.
- From Flag Rock Bastion, signallers warned incoming ships off the dangerous reefs, backed by musket shots fired from nearby Pigeon Island.
- The Portuguese thought the seaward side impregnable and fortified it with just one bastion, the Zwart or Black Bastion, now the oldest on the walls.
- The name Galle may come from the Portuguese galo, rooster, or from the Sinhala gaala, a place where cattle were herded.
- Galle appears as a busy port on Ptolemy's map of the 2nd century CE, trading with Greece, Arabia and China.
- Leyn Baan Street, the old rope walk, is where coir rope was twisted for ships; Pedlar Street recalls the Moorish traders who sold their wares there.
- The Dutch force that took Galle from the Portuguese in 1640 numbered about 2,500 men.
- According to a popular story, the Dutch planted breadfruit hoping it would sicken the locals, who instead learned to cook it with coconut.
- A house built in 1694 for the Dutch governor became the New Orient Hotel in 1865, catering to European passengers arriving at Galle by sea.
Why it is worth it
Galle Fort covers a small rocky peninsula at the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka: a whole town of 52 hectares enclosed by ramparts of granite and coral, with the Indian Ocean on three sides. Within the walls, a grid of streets is lined with low gabled houses and verandahs, churches, mosques and old warehouses, and many streets still carry Dutch names. UNESCO listed the Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications in 1988 as a rare meeting of European architecture and South Asian traditions from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
Galle was a port long before Europeans arrived, and Ibn Battuta called here. The Portuguese first landed in 1505; driven back from Colombo by King Rajasinha I of Sitawaka, they fell back on Galle in 1588 and threw up a small fort of palm trunks and mud, Santa Cruz, with a watchtower and three bastions. In 1640 the Dutch, allied with King Rajasinghe II of Kandy, took the fort, and over the following decades they ringed the entire peninsula with stone. Much of the walls dates from 1663 and the sea wall was completed in 1729. There are fourteen bastions in all, with names such as Sun, Moon, Star, Aurora and Triton. The Dutch also built sewers that the tide flushed out to sea. The British took over in 1796 and kept Galle as their southern headquarters until Colombo eclipsed it.
The Old Gate, completed in 1669, still bears on its inner face the emblem of the Dutch East India Company, a rooster on a rock above the letters VOC flanked by lions; the British placed the arms of George III on its outer face. The Main Gate, between the Moon and Sun bastions, was opened in 1873. The Dutch Reformed Church, the Groote Kerk, rebuilt in the 1750s, is paved with gravestones from the old Dutch cemetery and has an organ from 1760 and a pulpit of calamander wood. Nearby stand the Anglican All Saints' Church of 1871, the Meeran Mosque of 1904 and a great warehouse of around 1669, now the National Maritime Museum. The lighthouse on Point Utrecht Bastion dates from the 1930s. At Akersloot Bastion grows what is reputed to be Sri Lanka's oldest breadfruit tree. The fort withstood the 2004 tsunami, which damaged much of the coastal town.
Getting there
The fort forms the historic core of the city of Galle, which is linked to Colombo, about 113 km away, by the A2 highway, the E01 expressway and the coastal railway, which continues to Matara. The nearest airport is Koggala Airport (KCT), used for domestic flights, about 12 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Galle Fort, in the Bay of Galle on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka, was built first in 1588 by the Portuguese, then extensively fortified by the Dutch during the 17th century from 1649 onwards. It is a historical, archaeological and architectural heritage monument, which even after more than 437 years maintains a polished appearance, due to extensive reconstruction work done by the Archaeological Department of Sri Lanka.
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