Trincomalee

Why Visit

A working harbour city with a very different character to the south coast, plus easy access to Pigeon Island's reefs and Nilaveli's beaches.

A port city built around one of the finest natural deep-water harbours in the world, with beaches and reefs along the coast either side of it.

History

Trincomalee's natural deep-water harbour, one of the finest in the world, has made it strategically valuable for centuries and a repeated target of colonial rivalry. The Koneswaram Temple on Swami Rock overlooking the harbour is believed to have ancient origins, mentioned in early Tamil literary sources, though the elaborate structure standing before European contact was demolished by the Portuguese in 1622, who threw many of its statues into the sea below and used its dismantled stones to build Fort Frederick — a fact recorded by later Dutch surveyors and still visible in the fort's construction. Control of the harbour itself passed between the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British over the following two centuries, each recognising its value as one of the best natural anchorages in the Indian Ocean; the British ultimately held it and developed it into a major naval base, used heavily by Allied forces during the Second World War, including as a target of a Japanese air raid in April 1942. The present-day Koneswaram Temple was rebuilt on the clifftop in the 20th century, and some of the original statues thrown into the harbour in 1622 have since been recovered by divers.