Galle Face Hotel

Sunset at the Galle Face Hotel is announced by a piper. Each evening a Sri Lankan bagpiper in kilt plays on the lawn as the flag comes down and the sun drops into the Indian Ocean, a ceremony the hotel has kept for decades. Behind him, the chequerboard terrace fills with guests at tables, the surf hits the sea wall and the long façade of the oldest hotel in Colombo turns pink. The Galle Face Hotel has stood at 2 Galle Road, at the southern end of Galle Face Green, since 1864.

History

The hotel began as a Dutch villa that took in paying guests and grew into the first grand hotel of British Ceylon. By the 1890s it had its present shape, with a ballroom, wide verandahs and rooms facing the sea. The guest book reads like a century of passing celebrity: Noël Coward, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Yuri Gagarin, Richard Nixon, Roger Moore, Carrie Fisher and Arthur C. Clarke, who lived in Colombo for half his life and treated the hotel as a club. During the Second World War the Royal Navy used it, and Lord Mountbatten was a visitor when South East Asia Command was based in Ceylon. The hotel's longest-serving employee, the doorman K.C. Kuttan, joined in 1942 and worked until his death in 2014 at the age of 94. Since the 1960s the hotel has belonged to the Gardiner family. A long restoration of the northern wing, now called the Classic wing, was completed in 2015, and the southern wing was later redone.

Architecture and design

The building is a colonial seafront block of white stucco with arcaded verandahs on two levels, red-tiled roofs and a central lobby with a sweeping staircase and a high ceiling of carved timber. Prince Philip's 1935 Standard Nine, bought when he was a cadet aboard HMS Ramillies in 1940, stands in the lobby. The chequerboard terrace, black and white tiles laid between the lawn and the sea, is the most photographed spot in the hotel and the place to understand it.

Rooms and suites

The rooms of the Classic wing keep the colonial proportions: high ceilings, teak floors, four-poster beds in some categories and verandahs or balconies on the ocean side. Suites on the upper floors have sea-facing sitting rooms. The facts file gives no room count, and the figure changed with the restoration.

Dining

The facts file counts five restaurants and bars. The Verandah, on the terrace, serves lunch and afternoon tea with the ocean in front of it. 1864 is the formal dining room named for the founding year. Sea Spray on the lawn serves grilled seafood at night. The Travellers Bar is the old bar with its wall of guest photographs, and the Chequerboard on the terrace is the sunset drink.

Wellness

There is an outdoor pool on the lawn facing the sea, a spa with treatment rooms and a fitness centre.

Weddings and events

Colombo society has married here for a century. The Grand Ballroom and the Jubilee Ballroom, both in the original building, host wedding receptions and conferences, and the lawn beside the sea is used for ceremonies and outdoor dinners. The facts file records three event spaces with a top capacity of 1,000 and confirms that the hotel hosts both weddings and meetings.

Location

Galle Face Green, the seafront promenade laid out by the British in the 1850s, stretches north from the hotel to the Fort and the old parliament building. The Colombo Fort railway station and the business district are ten minutes by car; the Kollupitiya shops begin behind the hotel. Bandaranaike International Airport is around 45 minutes by the expressway. As a luxury hotel in Colombo it is the only one with the sea on one side and the city's parade ground on the other.