Galle Face Hotel, Colombo: Sri Lanka's stunning waterfront hotel

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This was published 7 years ago

Galle Face Hotel, Colombo: Sri Lanka's stunning waterfront hotel

By Lee Tulloch
The Galle Face Hotel.

The Galle Face Hotel.Credit: Martin Sasse

It's a steamy afternoon but still pleasant sitting on the veranda of the Galle Face Hotel on Colombo's waterfront, sipping tea from Sri Lanka's highlands and tucking into Battenberg cake, scones with clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches and tarts filled with watalappam, a moreish coconut custard.

Our tranquil afternoon tea is suddenly disrupted by a strangled, shrieking noise. Several heads swivel as a bagpiper enters the restaurant, accompanied by two attendants in crisp white military regalia. The parade marches past the diners and across the terrace to the sea, where the attendants take down the Sri Lankan flag, fold it, and are piped back through the restaurant to the place where they'll put the flag to bed.

This stirring ceremony takes place every afternoon and it is the most spectacular of the vestiges of the Galle Face Hotel's British colonial history. The hotel was built in 1864, the year of the opening of the first railway in Sri Lanka, by four British entrepreneurs who were keen to take advantage of the steady stream of traders passing through the port of Colombo. It is older than Raffles Singapore, which was established more than 20 years later.

Pool bar at night at the Galle Face Hotel.

Pool bar at night at the Galle Face Hotel.Credit: Martin Sassellaif

At first it was a Dutch-style guesthouse, named Galle Face House because it stood overlooking Galle Face Green, a several-hectare park the Dutch originally established to create a strategic line of cannon fire against the attacking Portuguese. By the mid-19th century it held a racecourse with a grandstand and a seaside promenade.

Once the Suez Canal was opened in 1869 and Europeans began to travel for leisure, Galle Face House experienced unexpected demand for its rooms. More land was acquired and architect Thomas Skinner completed the south wing in 1894. The four-storey building with its four dramatic towers became the Galle Face Hotel.

In many ways the hotel remains Colombo's traditional heart, the place where generations of well-to-do Sri Lankans held their weddings, celebrated birthdays and danced the night away in the Coconut Grove nightclub, where Radio Ceylon recorded musical programs. The hotel was so popular and the parties so legendary that guests would often sleep in and miss their ships.

A room at the Galle Face Hotel.

A room at the Galle Face Hotel.Credit: Martin Sassellaif

Mahatma Gandhi, Noel Coward, Che Guevara and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin​ were among legions of illustrious guests who laid their heads there. Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Sri Lanka most of his life, was a resident in 1996, where he completed his novel 3001: The Final Odyssey. In 1948 Peter Finch famously had a blazing affair with co-star Vivien Leigh when they were staying in the hotel while filming Elephant Walk. (She was sent home in disgrace by her husband Laurence Olivier​ and Elizabeth Taylor arrived to replace her.)

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The hotel still hosts more than 1000 weddings each year. And yet, as its young historian Sandali Matharage​ tells me, the Jubilee Ballroom wasn't airconditioned until 2013, when the hotel embarked on a major restoration of its north wing and added a conservatory to the ballroom.

It's always tricky renovating an historical gem, especially when it's precisely its faded grandeur that attracts guests to it, but the Galle Face seems to have lost little of its character in the updating, which took 2½ years.

The lobby of the Galle Face Hotel.

The lobby of the Galle Face Hotel.Credit: Martin Sassellaif

The potted palms may no longer be there in the lobby but the space is still grand, cool and elegant. The long breezy porch that faces the Galle Fort Green is still lined with wicker chairs where guests sit and read newspapers under slowly rotating ceiling fans. Only the rickshaws and horse carriages that deposited guests at the colonnaded front door have gone, replaced by luxury limousines and shiny black SUVs.

Back in 1906 two sisters, the misses Noyes, performed therapeutic massages in a back room. Now there's a grand new spa in the basement of the historic south wing. There's a croquet lawn if you feel like a spot of it, as the European elite did in the late 19th century.

There's also the "Crow Man", an elderly gentleman with a slingshot who has been hired to frighten away the crows that swoop and bother guests sitting on the terrace. A crow man has performed this task for a century.

The exterior of the Galle Face Hotel.

The exterior of the Galle Face Hotel.Credit: Martin Sassellaif

The original hotel had a long alabaster swimming pool with a slide and a retractable roof, which was removed to take advantage of the sea view. One of the first Otis elevators was installed there in 1890, followed by the connection of electricity. There was a chocolate shop, a billiard room and the longest dining room in Colombo at the time. An artist known as Platé had a studio on the ground floor beside the shops.

The Galle Face received the first case of Pimm's to be unloaded in Ceylon. Its signature drink since then has been a Pimm's Cup and some variations on the classic. Imbibing a sundowner on the hotel terrace is one of Colombo's memorable experiences, recommended even if you're not staying at the hotel. In a nod to modernity the new Travellers Bar has a mixologist who concocts molecular cocktails.

In the vestibule outside the chairman's offices, which was preserved during the renovations, the walls are decorated with murals by Russian artist Alexander Safranov, who fled Russia for Ceylon during the Russian Revolution. He lived in the hotel but developed a drinking problem and soon couldn't pay his bills. In return for accommodation, he painted murals and decorations for the hotel's themed events and parties. One of the murals, of a prince and a lion, could be an illustration of Narnia.

The hotel has been owned by the same family for 110 years. Its chairman, the enterprising Sanjeev Gardiner, is great-grandson of the man who was the hotel's majority shareholder in 1911. There's a fierce pride in the hotel's story on display everywhere. A small museum showcases artefacts, including toast racks, irons and crockery services with insignia. Prince Philip served in Sri Lanka during WWII when he was 19 and the museum's star attraction is his first car, an immaculate 1935 Standard Nine.

Historic photographs are hung throughout the hotels corridors, including those depicting the hotel's staff. "Although they may have been inconsequential at the time, they mean so much to us now," says Sandali Matharage​. "From the minute they join us they are becoming part of our history."

One recent visitor was an 80-year-old woman who had been born in one of the rooms. Her father had been general manager at the time and his offices are now the spa.

An icon of the hotel is sadly no longer with it. Its famed doorman, Kottarappu Chattu Kuttan​, dashing in handlebar moustaches, joined the hotel as a waiter in 1942 and worked there for 72 years, greeting guests. He was the world's oldest hotel doorman until he passed away in 2014.

The original hotel had 200 rooms but some have been expanded and modernised and the total is now 158. No two rooms are exactly the same. The four towers still contain suites and studio rooms with sensational views. I am staying in the Commonwealth Suite, which sounds rather grand, but is in fact is very comfortable, facing Galle Fort Green. (These days it is less green than dusty yellow.)

The hotel is a hub for visiting diplomats and the suites have the names of important legions, such as the Royal Dutch Suite and the Royal Scandinavian Suite. The three-bedroom, three-balcony Empress Suite occupies the rooms where Empress Eugenie of France stayed when she visited Ceylon in the early 1900s.

But the ocean view Junior Suites in the old south wing (rooms 2008, 3008, 4008) look the most appealing, having a lovely nautical simplicity, as if the guest were sailing on one of the cruise ships that came into port in 1930.

The hotel's buffet meals served in the Verandah restaurant are sumptuous, especially the curries. Breakfast is lavish, with Sri Lankan favourites such as string hoppers prepared on the spot. The fine dining restaurant, The 1864, serves rich dishes such as duck confit with chocolate sauce but if guests want lighter fare there's a pool bar serving crab burgers and a new seafood restaurant, Sea Spray, in a prime location on the waterfront.

Irish-born executive chef Adam Gaunt-Evans worked with Peter Kuruvita as a sous-chef at Sydney's Flying Fish. The Galle Face might have once been a hotel with "sleepy lobby guests lounging on wicker chairs sipping tea while staff rushed around in sarongs" as the historian puts it, but Colombo's grande dame has loosened her stays. It's still the place for Colombo to gather and visitors – brides, diplomats, movie stars and travellers seeking authentic colonial digs – to check in.

TRIP NOTES

MORE INFORMATION

gallefacehotel.com

srilanka.travel

About 35 kilometres from Bandaranaike International Airport. It is the only beachfront hotel in the city. Superior rooms start at $US166. galleface.com

GETTING THERE

Sri Lankan airlines codeshares with Qantas on flights to Colombo from Singapore. srilankan.com

STAYING THERE

The Galle Face Hotel is situated in the central business district of Colo.

Lee Tulloch was a guest of the Galle Face Hotel.

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