Gangaramaya Temple, Seema Malaka, Geoffrey Bawa and Cinnamon Gardens

South of Fort and Galle Face Green, the pace of Colombo softens around the green waters of Beira Lake and the shaded banyan avenues of Cinnamon Gardens (Colombo 7). This is the cultural and architectural core of the city, uniting Colombo's liveliest Buddhist monastery, its grandest museum and the masterworks of Sri Lanka's celebrated architect, Geoffrey Bawa (1919 to 2003).

Gangaramaya Temple and Seema Malaka on Beira Lake

Founded in the late 19th century by the scholarly monk Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Nayaka Thera, Gangaramaya Temple on Sri Jinaratana Road is part active Buddhist monastery, part monastic college and part eclectic treasury. Barefoot visitors walk past a whitewashed hemispherical dagoba, a stone-walled Bodhi tree courtyard and prayer halls packed floor-to-ceiling with donated Burmese jade Buddhas, Thai bronzes, carved ivory tusks and vintage curiosities. Your Gangaramaya entry ticket also covers Seema Malaka, located two minutes' walk east on the edge of Beira Lake. When the original 19th-century water shrine sank into the lake bed, Geoffrey Bawa redesigned it in the late 1970s as three tranquil timber-and-blue-tile pavilions linked by floating pontoon bridges over the water, ringed by dozens of bronze Buddha statues in different mudra hand gestures beneath a young Bodhi tree grown from the sacred tree at Anuradhapura.

Following Geoffrey Bawa: Number 11 and Gallery Cafe

Few architects have shaped a country's visual identity as deeply as Geoffrey Bawa, who blended traditional Sinhalese, Dutch and Portuguese pitched roofs and courtyards with modernist open plan living. In Colombo, you can experience his domestic work first-hand in Colombo 3 (Kollupitiya / Bagatalle):

• Number 11 (33rd Lane, off Bagatalle Road): over four decades starting in 1958, Bawa bought four adjacent small bungalows and stitched them together into a cool white labyrinth of internal lightwells, frangipani courtyards, antique columns and a rooftop loggia. Book a timed guided tour in advance on the official Geoffrey Bawa Trust website.
• Paradise Road The Gallery Cafe (Alfred House Road): originally built in 1961 as Bawa's own architectural studios around reflection pools and open-air pavilions, now an atmospheric courtyard restaurant, bar and design shop where you can stop for lunch or black pork curry without a tour booking.

Cinnamon Gardens (Colombo 7): National Museum, Viharamahadevi Park and Independence Square

Named after the 800-acre cinnamon plantations cultivated here during Dutch rule, Cinnamon Gardens is Colombo's greenest quarter. Start at the 1877 Colombo National Museum to see the gilded throne of the Kandyan kings, ancient stone inscriptions and 8th-century Polonnaruwa bronzes. Walk north across Viharamahadevi Park past the white neoclassical dome of Town Hall, then head ten minutes south-east to Independence Memorial Hall, a sculpted granite pavilion surrounded by stone lions and cycling paths.