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Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications
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How it came to be
Galle stands on a small rocky promontory on Sri Lanka's southwest coast. A Portuguese fleet under Lourenço de Almeida landed in its harbour in 1505, and the Portuguese later built a first fort here of palm trunks and mud. In 1640 the Dutch, allied with King Rajasinghe II, took it with about 2,500 men.
The Dutch enclosed the town with walls and 14 bastions, most of the walls built in 1663 and the oldest gate finished in 1669. The ramparts follow the rocky shoreline and combine granite with coral. The streets follow a Dutch grid of parcels, the houses add South Asian verandas and courtyards, and a 17th-century underground drain is still flushed by the tide.
The British took the fort in 1796. UNESCO listed the town in 1988, and in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 the fort held while part of Galle town outside was damaged. It remains a lived-in town with homes and government offices.
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