Old City Hall

As a result of Colombo being made a municipal council in 1866, the old town hall building was setup in 1873 by the then colonial British government and opened by the then Governor of Ceylon Sir William Gregory.
The building is set out in a neo-gothic style, and at the time was built to impress, to show off the grand colonial architecture. The building was built at a cost of $70,000 at the time.

Location
The old town hall building is situated at the round about junction between, Main street, Dam street, and Bodhiraja Mawatha, in the area of Pettha of Colombo. The below map shows the exact location.

Getting There
The easiest way to get there is by tuk tuk or taxi, alternatively you can walk from any one of the hotels in the Galle Face, Fort areas (30-40min). The markets of pettha can get very busy, and there a little or no pavements in some of the side roads, but this all adds to the experience.
A walk from the central bus station, which is located in Pettah, the route It took followed the street markets and the bazaars of main street, will discuss the markets and shopping bazaars in another article later. This was around a 15 min walk, which however took me a good hour as I had stopped to take pictures of all the lively and noisy activity in the streets of both the shoppers and the merchants alike, I must say it is a perfect set for a street photographer to capture moods, personalities and customs. You can also easily get there from the main railway station. I would say the walk would be around 20 mins at the most, and it is relatively easy to find.
Locals are very friendly and most of them will speak a varying degree of English Please note they all like a photo to be taken of them, did entertain them with this! Don’t worry about getting lost as either you will be able to get directions from a local, or you will be able to get a tuk tuk, these are abundantly available all over the place.
All streets are well labelled, and most shops on their name boards have the full address on them, so even if you miss the street name board, you will be able to figure out where you are from the shops.

Highlights
The building it self is a main highlight, which has stood there for over 140 years now, however, to the right of the main building is a shed like area which houses some excellent old infrastructure building machinery, which were used during the colonial period, as well as some service vehicles, such as Sri Lanka’s first mobile library van, first garbage collection truck, and steam rollers that were used to pave the roads of Colombo.
The building it self has some excellent late 1800s wood work, beautiful wooden ceilings and window frames. There are also some panes of stained glass.
Most of the wood work were done using imported Teak wood from Burma, and were locally crafted. The building it self somewhat from the exterior looks much like a church. See below pictures taken of both the exterior and interior of this colonial building.

Typical Travellers Blog
The old Town Hall is a gothic-type Dutch building at the end of Main Street in Pettah. Inside it is a creepy museum of life-size dolls sitting around a wooden table in different postures: a replica of a council meeting in 1906.

Entrance
The building is right smack in the middle of all the little shops and street stalls of Pettah. It’s all arches, needle point columns, crumbly yellow walls and creaky staircases – it’s got the making of a haunted mansion so it might be a fun visit with friends later in the day rather than sooner. There is no entrance ticket, you just walk inside and ask somebody near the main staircase if you can check out the building. There’s a random little museum of cool old stuff next to the building that you can check out too.
Sugath is the caretaker these days and will take you up some creaky wooden steps to a musty floor upstairs. Next to the door to this ‘museum’ are some ordinary well-kept rooms with many chairs and wooden tables that look like they are still used today – Sugath says these spaces are sometimes used for official meetings.

Upstairs
As Sugath unlocked the door upstairs I jumped a little – around a table sat 15 men, quietly and eerily, some with their backs against their chairs, some leaning forward, some with their hands folded, others making faint gestures. Dunuwila, Hector Jayawardene and someone named ‘W. Shakespeare’ are some of the council members at the table. This set-up was apparently an attempt to immortalize a black-and-white photograph of the 1906 council – a photograph found hanging on the wall in this room.
Some of them are wearing some very interesting looking ties.
Around them are life-size servants in uniform, a few paintings and and a few old photographs of politicians in local history.
There’s an adjacent room from this council chamber flanked by lovely tinted arched glass – here you find an old map of Colombo from 1785, some very old type-writers, an old radio……and a view from this 19th century building of a 21st century market.