The Aesthete’s Colombo: Design Destinations, Edible Explorations and Luxury Stays
Colombo. Where Time Folds Like a Sarong. Beejliving explores
Everyone I know, except us, transited through Colombo to the heady environs of forests and beaches. We, instead, spent a pleasurable week in Sri Lanka’s palpably green capital city. The air in Colombo hits you like a warm, damp towel, a sensation that requires surrender, not resistance.
It’s a city of extravagant contradictions, where colonial ghosts sit along brash modernity. I found myself repeatedly seduced by spaces that shouldn’t logically coexist but somehow do, beautifully. Here are my must-dos in paradise city.
The Architecture of Memory
Geoffrey Bawa’s House No. 11 : I wandered through rooms that breathe. The celebrated architect’s laboratory doesn’t announce itself from the street. It’s just a discreet door in a whitewashed wall, like most profound things in Sri Lanka. Inside, the home unfolds as a series of revelations: a sudden courtyard with a frangipani tree and a staircase that climbs toward an improbable slice of sky. The boundaries between inside and outside dissolve in the humidity. Bawa’s genius wasn’t in grand statements but in these intimate negotiations between shelter and exposure, past and present. Houses remember, even when people forget. I thought about this while running my hand along a wooden banister worn smooth by decades of touch.
Colombo National Museum (Sri Lanka National Museum): It houses artifacts behind glass, but the real museum is Colombo itself, a living collection of architectural styles, cultural practices, and human adaptations. Walking through its galleries, I found myself most enraptured by its Buddhist collection of statues and its batik textiles. Built in an Italian architectural style, it’s a dreamy white edifice standing sentinel to the region’s deep history.
Commercial Temples
At Paradise Road, housed in an old colonial residence, design becomes ritual. Udayshanth Fernando’s gorgeous wunderkammer has objects, brass candlesticks, handwoven throws, ceramic elephants, arranged in every nook and crevice. It’s curation bordering on obsession. I bought a small nativity scene and a door stopper.
Barefoot performs a similar alchemy, turning shopping into cultural immersion. Bolts of hand-loomed fabric in impossible colours. Magentas that verge on hallucination, blues deep enough to drown in, line the walls of what was once someone’s home. In the garden. At the café, The boundaries between work and leisure, tourism and local life, blurred in the afternoon heat.
At Buddhi Batiks, I took a walk through the store with Darshi Keerthisena, the second-generation entrepreneur of this homegrown Sri Lankan brand. Her parents were the creative force behind this circular brand, which creates the most beautiful saris, dresses, and accessories, as well as wall paintings for your home.
Spa Ceylon is the tear-drop shaped nation’s answer to luxury Ayurveda. What I love the most is its vocabulary: the bold intensity of colour in the packaging and depth of the range of products, including a vast selection on detoxing, destressing, and sleep. From gifts to personal artefacts, it’s impossible to leave Sri Lanka without one of these fragrant doodads.
Pendi. From a single lap to becoming a creative hub for local Sri Lankan designers, you can pick up everything from a rattan chair to a batik room divider. We love founder Natalie Pendigrast’s vision for the store and all the little knick-knacks to bring back home.
Later, at Lovi Sarongs, I found myself confronting the question: could I, should I, would I wear a sarong back home? This is Sri Lankan haute couture and what I love is that Lovi also gives you a sarong string on purchase of one.
Sustenance and Memory
My favourite hidey hole in Colombo was our namesake, seed cafe, all sunshine and smiles and salads and seed bowls. I loved the avo toast, the coconut water with chia seeds and the roasted pumpkin salad. In the space you can shop and attend a yoga class too once your tummy is full.
The aroma at Black Cat Café mingles European coffee culture with tropical fruit sweetness. Housed in a renovated colonial bungalow, the café serves flat whites to digital nomads and local creatives alike. A framed photograph of a stern British officer hangs above me, as a cat yonder stretches and yawns.
At The Gallery Café at Paradise Road, I ate the most sumptuous meal of a mustard fish curry with gotukola sambol under whirring ceiling fans while watching a lizard comatose on a nearby wall. An apt metaphor for Colombo itself, pass ponds of Koi fish to enter this garden paradise which was once upon a time the office of Geoffrey Bawa.
Nocturnal Luxuries
The Galle Face Hotel stands like an aging dowager empress facing the Indian Ocean, both imposing and slightly melancholy. At sunset, I sipped on tea while watching families stroll along the oceanfront promenade. The hotel has witnessed more than 150 years of celebrations against the backdrop of colonial rule, independence, civil war, and now, peace.
I dined at Tintagel, where history hangs heavy as monsoon clouds. Once home to political dynasties, the boutique hotel maintains an atmosphere of whispered secrets and elegant decay. We ate a very elegant meal in hushed tones in this theatrical hotel that feels suspended between centuries.
With a private beach and a legacy of over 200 years, Mount Lavinia is a spectacular retreat just a step away from the city’s boisterousness. Underground tunnels and a tragic love story just add to its verdant charms. And we love that there’s an elegant, old world train station right next door.
For old world charm, head to Taj Samudra, that is set on 11 acres of land, with illustrious neighbours such as the Galle Face Hotel. With six restaurants, a Golden Keys concierge, and miles of greenery, you will feel right at home.
The newly minted ITC Ratnadipa presents Sri Lanka’s heritage through the pristine lens of luxury Indian hospitality. With sweeping views of the Indian ocean, it is framed by the Beira Lake. With cascading terraces reminiscent of Nuwara Eliya tea gardens, the pristine coastal gem has nine restaurants and 352 rooms and suites with splashy views.
