Galle

The Walled City of Galle is a major ocean-side city, and located in south-western Sri Lanka. Galle was occupied by the Portuguese, Dutch and British. Galle is located 116 Km., southwest of Colombo. The main A2 highway from Colombo to Galle, as well as the railway line are both picturesque routes following the coastline closely for much of the way. Although contemporary Galle has grown into a major city and spreads into the hinterland, the Fort is still the slow-beating heart of Galle’s history.

 

The walled city has stood since the early sixteenth century, through the Colonial periods of the Portuguese, Dutch and British and in our present times is proclaimed as an Archaeological Reserve and been identified as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

 

Galle is a port city that has been known to chroniclers of civilizations mariners and traders from the days of King Solomon. Legends woven about Sri Lanka describe how King Solomon got peacocks and cinnamon through the port of Galle. If not true they may well approximate truth, for the phonetic genesis of “Cinnamon” is traced to Hebrew.  

 

The Greek geographer Cosmas Indicopluestas of Alexandria, mentions Galle as an important stop for Ships and Sailors of the Levant as early 6th century of the first millennium. Galle in the Sri Lanka Map has attracted Persians, Arabs, Greeks and Romans from the west and Indians and Malays from Gujarat and Malacca.  

 

Galle enters modern history in 1505 when the first Portuguese ship of Lorenzo de Almeida was driven to its inviting bay. The bay is sheltered by a rocky peninsula which according local lore was a lump of Himalayan soil which the Monkey God Hanuman dropped when he brought medicinal plants and herbs to treat the wounded in a battle in the Hindu epic Ramayana. In a seminal book “Ceylon under the British” a scholar records in impishly imaginative words “… If the vagaries of the winds brought the Portuguese to Sri Lanka, the lure of Cinnamon kept them there.”  

 

So they did, until evicted by the Dutch in 1640. Galle you discover today, will relate that story from every nook and corner as you walk its streets and corridors’ of well-preserved structures that have withstood both time and the price of progress. 

 

Galle was Global long before the advent of the internet and the web. In fact from the latter half of the first millennium.