Visit Geoffrey Bawa’s garden at Lunuganga

What the experience is

Geoffrey Bawa, born in Colombo in 1919, is the best known architect Sri Lanka has produced. The style associated with him is called tropical modernism, and much of what travellers now expect of a resort in the tropics, the lobby without walls, the view framed by columns, the pool that seems to run into the sea, can be traced in part to his work.

Lunuganga is where it began. In 1948 Bawa, then a lawyer, bought a neglected rubber estate near the coast at Bentota, meaning to make a garden. He found he did not know how to build, and went to London to study architecture. He worked on the garden for about fifty years. It is a sequence of terraces, lawns, pavilions and long views across a lake, composed like a painting, and it is his most personal work.

The garden is open for guided tours by arrangement. A visit leads from the entrance court through the house and its verandas to the lawns, the water garden and the hill from which the long view was cut. A few rooms in the house and the garden pavilions are let to guests, who have the place to themselves in the early morning and evening.

When to go

The south-west coast is driest from about December to April.

Good to know

Tours and rooms are arranged through the estate; current tour times, reservation rules and photography terms should be checked before travelling, and a visit cannot be assumed to be possible on the day. Lunuganga is a couple of hours by road from the international airport, which makes it a natural last stop.

Why OKYTO recommends it

It explains, better than any of his hotels, how Bawa thought: the line between inside and outside is hard to find. It completes a route through his buildings, from his town house in Colombo to Heritance Kandalama and the Lighthouse at Galle.