Matara

Why Visit

A working coastal city rather than a tourist town, with its own compact Dutch fort and a coastline that marks the island's southernmost stretch.

A coastal city at the southern tip of the island, with a Dutch colonial fort and star-shaped rampart smaller and quieter than Galle's.

History

Matara was fortified by the Portuguese and then rebuilt and expanded by the Dutch, who constructed the distinctive Star Fort here between 1763 and 1765 as an inner defensive stronghold behind the older, larger fort walls closer to the river mouth — a direct response to a local Sinhalese uprising in 1760–61 that had briefly overrun the Dutch garrison and threatened their control of the southern coast. The star-shaped design, with points angled to give defenders overlapping lines of fire, was a European military engineering style adapted to a compact colonial outpost. The city served as a secondary administrative and trading centre for the Dutch, and later the British, south of Galle, and its fort, clock tower and colonial-era quarter reflect that layered defensive history on a smaller, quieter scale than Galle's.