Gangaramaya Temple

Gangaramaya Temple is a working Buddhist temple and learning centre at 61 Sri Jinarathana Road in Hunupitiya, central Colombo, beside Beira Lake. It suits visitors who want to see a busy city temple, its packed museum and Geoffrey Bawa's Seema Malaka pavilion on the lake.

A shipping merchant's land for a monk

The temple was completed in the late 19th century. Don Bastian de Silva Jayasuriya Goonewardane, a shipping merchant, wanted land for a temple for the monk Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Thera. He bought a marshy plot, filled it at great cost, and built a large dagoba, a decorative entrance arch and a moonstone modelled on those at Anuradhapura. He planted a Bo sapling from the Sri Maha Bodhi in Anuradhapura and built a three-storey preaching hall. The temple was first named Padawthota Gangaramaya Viharaya.

Mixed architecture and a crowded museum

The buildings mix Sri Lankan, Thai, Indian and Chinese architecture. The complex has a vihara, a stupa, the Bodhi tree, an assembly hall for monks and a relic chamber, along with a library, residential halls, a monastic school and an alms hall. The crowded museum holds gifts from devotees, from statues and relics to vintage cars and clocks. The Seema Malaka, a meditation and assembly pavilion standing on Beira Lake, was designed by Geoffrey Bawa and funded by a Muslim donor, and it has its own entrance by the water.

The February Navam Maha Perahera and welfare homes

Each February, around the full moon, the temple organises the Navam Maha Perahera, a street procession with elephants and dancers. It also runs welfare work, including homes for elderly people, a vocational school and an orphanage.