Enjoy travelling on your own doorstep as the world shuts down due to the coronavirus. Rethink your travel plans for the next few months and look for beautiful places around the island to have a holiday in like Galle Fort.
Nothing beats entering the old fortress built out of breathing corals as the black tunnel gate opens up into a gash of bellowing fresh sea air, with distended creepers riding pillion on giant Banyan trees hobnobbing with an ancient merchant caste, stunning architecture and views from the walls. A strange choreography can always be detected here, with the musical call to prayer emanating from the mosque or the temple’s sound system merging with the toots of ice cream vendors’ bicycle horns and other hot and spicy snacks and pickle vendors plying the sonorities of their trade as the Indian Ocean thunders and whooshes by illustrating just how beautiful and idyllic this spot is.
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| Galle Fort’s iconic temple |
Its vibrant history as a series of huge spice storehouses, a secure vantage point of military importance, is buoyed by its lofty, grandoise colonial architecture and precariously narrow streets filled a fascinating characters has reinvented itself over the centuries, even decades and sometimes even daily seems to be second nature to Galle Fort and the joie de vivre of the inhabitants.
The history of old Galle Fort is a tempestuous one and despite numerous invasions, different colonial rulers, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, it remains totally intact and is considered one of the world’s greatest examples of colonial fortification. Some say it’s protected by the tomb of a Muslim saint on the beach just outside the Fort walls on the Indian Ocean side by the army camp, which miraculously purifies salty seawater and turns it into pure drinking water. Others claim that King Solomon left behind the key to the universe, which acts as a totem against all evil and then there are the magical sea rocks that surround the Fort walls, which the locals say are bewitched, protecting it from the unpredictable sea, acting as breakers against the waves so that people can swim all year round in the waters directly around the Fort walls.
As you walk from the Galle main town bus stand, past the world famous Galle international cricket stadium, fishermen will try to sell you tuna, butter fish or the catch of the day, and then the noise of bartering vanishes as you walk through the archway of the old gate, made of shells taken from the ship’s ballast, coral and clay, into this tiny citadel of around two thousand people. It is a place where you will find everything from a treasure hunter to time locked historical houses. Like all cities there is a naughty boy whose exploits are legendary and an expert diver called Noor who harnesses giant octopus as well as a lad that uncovers bounty from four hundred year old shipwrecks, a mischievous travelling ginger tea seller and a hundred gem merchants and wickedly talented chutney makers whose produce used to stop sailors from getting scurvy in the past.
There is the house that was a pigsty, which supplied the rich Dutch merchants with pork, one that was a horse’s stable, and houses that had milking parlours in their tiny backyards. It is a place in which the mosque trustee and the Buddhist monk have regular telephone conversations and where all religions live in harmony.
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| Yummy dishes against a tropical garden |
As you wander and get lost in the maze of backstreets, old men will accompany you and talk proudly about the various theories of Galle’s true origins, stories that you can enjoy hotly debating over sweet cups of fresh ginger or mint tea. Fazal on Leyn Baan Street at the Royal Dutch Café with a little encouragement will show you his historical collection of china plates and his album of photographs showing what happened on the day the tsunami hit the Fort and Galle New Town. Fazal loves to share information handed down over seven generations through his family and each time you go to his café you will find out a little bit more about the Fort. Wherever you wander someone will have a story to tell about the area - the Fort as the legendary city of Tarshish of biblical times and the place where King Solomon was the first foreigner to arrive in Sri Lanka, where he obtained chests full of gems and spices to woo the Queen of Sheba with. Some of the Muslims will debate this point saying that the Moors have been trading for thousands of years in these waters, and then there are those who say the Portuguese were the first foreigners to come to Galle and build this enigmatic Fort of war known in colonial times as the ‘Black Fort’ in order to protect this ancient trading port in the middle of the world. Parts of these walls can still be seen in Law Court Square by the Maritime Museum.
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| Great places to go like The Galle Fort Art Gallery |
In the National Museum by the Amangalla Hotel on Church Street you will discover the official line on the matter, which describes how the first recorded ship arrived accidentally under Captain Lourenco de Almedia in 1505, when his boat was driven off course from the Maldives and had to take shelter in Galle’s harbour. Legend has it that on arriving the Portuguese heard a cock crow from a rock (cock is galo in Portuguese) and as a result named this new port Galo. The other theory is that Galle means stones in Singhalese and the Fort is indeed surrounded by treacherous rocks. Recognizing Sri Lanka’s pivotal trading position, the Portuguese invaders built a Fort to protect the harbour, as it became a pivotal spot for trade. The Dutch later destroyed this structure with the exception of Zwart Bastion. The truth lies somewhere between the official and the unofficial history. Merchants for centuries have come from all over the world to trade with Sri Lanka and many of them dazzled by the island’s magnificent beauty decided to settle in Galle. These gem, gold and silver traders came from Portugal, Morocco, Arabia, Malaysia, China and Southern India, each leaving their mark, which you can see both in the current mix of people living in the Fort, the food and through the artifacts on show in the National Museum on Church Street and in the historical archives in Colombo.
The three rooms in the National Museum are full of exquisite colonial swords, tortoise shell fans, intricate ivory relics and hand carved wooden jewellery boxes. At the entrance a map explains the layout of the area covering the five main streets that include Rope Walk ‘Leyn Baan’ and Lighthouse Street ‘Zeeburg Street,’ illustrating how little has changed since 1640 when Dutch traders forced the Portuguese out and built the current 40 hectare Galle Fort, which in 1988 became a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site.
The only subsequent changes that were made were by the British who took over in 1779 and remained in power until Sri Lanka gained Independence in February 1948. The British only made small architectural alterations to the Fort’s existing structure firstly adding a second entrance gate in 1887 to help with the congestion (now known as the Main Gate), the Clock Tower overlooking the cricket ground in 1888, the iconic white, still functioning Lighthouse on the south side of the Fort built in 1938, and white picket fencing to the porches. In addition they added a Coat of Arms over the entrances of the Old Dutch Gate and created lovely rose gardens that can still be seen in a number of private houses’ colonnaded courtyards along Pedler Street. Writer, E. Jackson summed the place up by saying “the peculiar style of houses, the overhanging trees...the balmy and delicious atmosphere...tend to throw an air of novelty and romance around.”
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| Galle Fort: a great local holiday destination |
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