Celebrity Millennium departed Habantota, Sri Lanka on 19 November 2025, and the next day we found ourselves in one of Sri Lanka’s two(!) capitals — Colombo. That’s right. Sri Lanka has two capitals. Colombo is home to the executive (President’s House) and judicial (Court of Appeals and Supreme Court) branches of government, but the legislative branch (Parliament of Sri Lanka) is in neighboring Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte. But we wouldn’t be seeing those sights this day. Ursula had us on tour for other destinations, with the first being the Colombo National Museum, also known as the Sri Lanka National Museum. Parking is beyond the northeast corner of the museum and the entrance is from the south, so we walked around the corner of the museum to be greeted by the large grounds in front of it:
The Colombo National Museum is housed inside an impressive building built in the Italian Renaissance style. The museum was built in 1876, designed by Irish architect James Smither, and opened its doors to the public on 1 January 1877. Within its walls are a huge number of exhibits ranging from regalia associated with the Kandyan monarchs to over 100,000 artifacts dating all the way back to prehistory up through Sri Lankas more recent colonial past.
As one might suspect, there are a lot of ancient Hindu artifacts in the museum:
On Wednesday we’ll continue on a visual tour of the inside of the museum, and next Monday I’ll treat you to views of the magnificent grounds. As for today, I’ll leave you with the images below. Just click on any one of them to enlarge and bring up the slide show:
Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini!)
Decisions — Murder in Paradise
The Globe — Murder in Luxury
