Matara: The Beautiful City
Matara photo by Piaser.
Thameera calls Matara the most beautiful city in Sri Lanka. It’s certainly up there. I was there last week and this somehow surprised me, but I suppose it shouldn’t. Matara has good southern beach, the most beautiful mosque in Sri Lanka, interesting bridges, and uniformly attractive houses. It’s an attractive place.
Colombo has beautiful spots, but punctuated and at times dominated by concrete latapata, hideous cladding and glass over latapata concrete, and commercial monstrosities. Many buildings are made to live in or work in and that’s it, there’s no connection to the past or thought of the future.
In Matara, by contrast, there are a lot of old buildings lovingly restored or respectably crumbling. Even the new constructions (the suspension bridges) aspire to be memorable rather than functional. The Matara Guest House is restored, but probably the best government guest house I’ve ever seen, and there some quite decent ones (Anuradhapura for example). What struck me the most was the average houses. They were big, and almost all – new or old – stuck to the basic architectural motif of pillars, verandah, house.
Many Sri Lankan houses have lost the verandah, or any unifying traits, but most Matarese buildings have kept it. They’re quite nice. There’s something about a verandah and pillars, I dunno. Like the Parthenon.
Matara is a great city, straight shot to Galle on one side and Tangalle/Yala on the other. With the new Southern Expressway (see a video in two minutes) it’s about an hour and a half from Maharagama, I’d say about 2-3 hours from Colombo proper. The place developed pretty well under the design sense of then Minister Mangala Samaraweera and it more than anyone will benefit from the port and other dev in Hambantota. It’s an interesting place. It’s not the most beautiful place in Sri Lanka (I have a thing for Ella) but as far as cities go, yeah, I think Matara and Kandy are it for me.
Today on the 
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Yes, Matara’s overall appearance and behavior is good. But I think inner roads of the city could use some more developments. It’s upto the UC, which was elected recently.
Anyway, you said Matara and Kandy are the most beautiful cities as you see it. But I think Kandy too have the problem of “concrete latapata”.
If you are person who uses public transportation, Kandy suffers from the “Private Bus Stand and SLTB Bus Stand Disease” which Southern cities don’t have. That very fact makes me very unhappy about those cities and tell me that they don’t have any organizing brains in their councils.
Kandy is beautiful at night or first thing in the morning, the whole city is a lovely bowl. Makes me think of the inside of a volcano, but that may be just me.
The daytime traffic, however, is horrendous. The central bus stand is actively hostile to pedestrians and every time I’ve been there there’s been constant gridlock around the lake.
Some photos, please?
Have driven through Matara but never stopped to look around.
Indi, I’ve been a follower of this blog (and your Twitter) for years but haven’t really commented yet, but when you made this post, I just had to. I lived here for 9 months in 06-07 when volunteering at a deaf school nearby and it is my favorite city in the country. I’m biased, of course, but it has just the right balance of small-town and big-city feel. It’s got beaches, good computer shops, nice temples, and as you said, it’s now well-situated to the rest of the country (the highway is one hour to the west, Hambantota far to the east).
I went back last summer for the first time in three years and was astonished by the road projects in and around town. The main road is much bigger (you can tell it was expanded because they sliced off the front 5 feet of every building lining the road to make room for the lanes). There’s traffic lights there – there were NO lights back in 2008. Going back next summer, can’t wait to see what else is new there. But it’s definitely weird. I hope Matara doesn’t lose that small-town feel. If it does, there’s always Polhena or Kamburugamuwa to hide out in.
thanks for the comment Adam. Matara was a pleasant surprise for me
[...] this year I’m heading down towards Matara, which should be sufficiently enough away. For [...]