Qualla: Colombo National Museum

Colombo National Museum: Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo taken by me, CC BY-SA 3.0. The throne of the last King of Kandy sits inside a museum that a British governor built. There is something in that arrangement worth pausing over. Sri Vikrama Rajasinha lost his throne in 1815 when the Kandyan Convention handed his kingdom to the British. The crown jewels and the throne itself were taken to London. When they were eventually returned, they did not go back to a palace - they went into a display case at the Colombo National Museum, founded in 1877 by Governor Sir William Henry Gregory. The museum was, and is, an act of collection: gathering the cultural and natural heritage of Sri Lanka under one roof, arranging it in galleries, making it available for study. That the colonizer built the institution that now preserves the colonized kingdom's regalia is one of those colonial ironies that refuses to resolve itself cleanly.

Read more: Colombo National Museum on Qualla

Image: Photo taken by me | CC BY-SA 3.0

Colombo National Museum: A Governor's Gift in Italian Stone

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Annesley Rozairo, CC BY-SA 1.0. Sir William Henry Gregory established the Colombo Museum on 1 January 1877 in a building designed in the Italian architectural style, constructed by Arasi Marikar Wapchie Marikar. The building was completed in 1876 and opened the following year, its facade a piece of European for...

Read more: Colombo National Museum on Qualla

Image: Annesley Rozairo | CC BY-SA 1.0

Colombo National Museum: The Statue That Stayed in London

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rehman Abubakr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the museum's holdings is a copy of the Statue of Tara, a three-quarter life-size bronze that ranks among the finest surviving examples of medieval Sri Lankan art. The original is in the British Museum in London, taken during the colonial period and never returned. The copy ...

Read more: Colombo National Museum on Qualla

Image: Rehman Abubakr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Colombo National Museum: From One Museum to Nine

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Levi Clancy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Under the directorship of P.E.P. Deraniyagala, the Colombo Museum was elevated to national status, and a fully-fledged Department of National Museums was established in 1942 under Act No. 31. Branch museums followed in Jaffna, Kandy, and Ratnapura, eventually growing to nine acro...

Read more: Colombo National Museum on Qualla

Image: Levi Clancy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Colombo National Museum: The Library Beneath the Museum

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anuradha Dullewe Wijeyeratne, Public domain. The museum's library may be its most consequential legacy. Established on the same day as the museum itself, it absorbed the Government Oriental Library and began collecting with a focus on Sri Lanka, the broader Orient, and natural science. The legal deposit requirement, in plac...

Read more: Colombo National Museum on Qualla

Image: Anuradha Dullewe Wijeyeratne | Public domain