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T’s monthly travel series, Flocking To, highlights places you might already have on your wish list, sharing tips from frequent visitors and locals alike.
Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city, is once again beckoning tourists. The city is proving its resilience and putting on a more democratic and left-leaning face. While most visitors know Colombo for its monumental lotus-shaped tower and sprawling array of temples and mosques, there’s now a distinct interest in the revival of its cultural heritage.
The recent arrival of new fairs like the Ceylon Literary & Arts Festival and the Matara Festival for the Arts have brought a more international focus to Colombo and the southern fort cities of Sri Lanka. And in February, Jagath Weerasinghe, one of the country’s leading authorities on art and archaeology, co-founded a new gallery called MIAC, or Millennium Art Contemporary, just outside of Colombo, in the suburb of Athurugiriya.
Among the country’s many contemporary talents is the fashion designer Amesh Wijesekera, who works with artisanal craft textiles and dead stock fabrics left behind in Sri Lankan factories to produce boundary-breaking pieces that address South Asian gender and sexual identity.
The country’s first international tourism campaign in more than a decade and the expansion, since 2023, of its visa-free entry program have contributed to a rebound in visitors, with more than two million arrivals last year, a 38 percent increase. Many of them are finding Colombo’s gallery and restaurant scenes and its newer designer hotels to be as tempting a draw as Sri Lanka’s famous tea trails and southern surfing beaches.
Here, four Colombo insiders offer a tour of the places that are driving a renewed sense of optimism in the city.
After a tumultuous few years, Colombo is once again beckoning tourists. Shaking off the political upheaval that followed the country’s 2022 economic collapse, the city is proving its resilience and putting on a more democratic and left-leaning face.
There’s also more appreciation internationally these days for the art and design that have emerged from Sri Lanka’s unique circumstances over time, from the Tropical Modernism style of the late architect Geoffrey Bawa to the male erotica of the Colombo-born photographer Lionel Wendt.
Sri Lanka has been receiving international people since at least the third century B.C. “This has been a cosmopolitan place for centuries, for millennia, so it’s written into our cultural genes,” says Weerasinghe.
As a local artist, I can tell you this island has been receiving international people since at least the third century B.C. “This has been a cosmopolitan place for centuries, for millennia, so it’s written into our cultural genes,” says Weerasinghe.
This is one of my favorite places because you could literally be the only person in this massive building. A lot of national museums tend to be pretty heavy on narrative, but somehow here, you can take it in more on your own terms.
The best places to see art are the Sapumal Foundation, which was the home of one of the members of the ’43 Group, the avant-garde modernists of Sri Lanka, and the galleries of Saskia Fernando and Dominic and Nazreen Sansoni.
Kelaniya Temple is a beautiful Buddhist place with lots of 18th-century and early 20th-century Buddhist murals by Solias Mendis.
Gothami Viharaya, a 15-minute drive north, with murals by George Keyt. Mendis’s work in Kelaniya, the temples in Thimbirigasyaya and Gothami Viharaya were all painted during the same period for the same audience but in three different styles, showing the cosmopolitan nature of Sri Lankan society.
Getting lost is the best way to explore the Pettah Market because you never know what you’ll find.
The Red Mosque, which combines Islamic, Gothic and Neoclassical influences. The surrounding architecture is also historic, with many British colonial constructions, like the Cargills Building.
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