Amangalla

Amangalla stands on Church Street, inside the ramparts of Galle Fort on the south coast of Sri Lanka, in a building the Dutch began in 1684 as the headquarters of their commanders. For about 140 years it was the New Oriental Hotel. Aman took it over in 2005 and kept the old rooms, with their high ceilings, wooden floors and sash windows.

The building has been a hotel for longer than it was anything else.

From headquarters to hotel

The Dutch East India Company built Galle Fort in the seventeenth century, and this complex, finished in 1715, housed its commanders and their staff. When the British took the island it became quarters for soldiers. In 1865 it was turned into a hotel for the passengers whose ships called at Galle between Europe and the East, and it opened the following year as the New Oriental Hotel.

It later belonged to Nesta Brohier, who kept it going through the twentieth century. When Aman restored it, the company added a spa and a swimming pool in the garden behind, and left the main rooms close to how they had been.

Rooms with four-poster beds

The hotel has about thirty rooms and suites, some formed from several smaller rooms of the old building. They keep the original floors and tall windows, with four-poster beds and furniture of the colonial period. Guests enter through the great hall that the Dutch called the zaal. Meals are served in the dining room, under chandeliers, and tea on the veranda that looks onto Church Street.

Inside the fort

Galle Fort is a World Heritage Site, enclosed by bastions on the sea. The hotel is a few minutes' walk from them, and the walk around the ramparts at the end of the afternoon is the natural way to see the fort. Colombo's airport is about two hours away by road, and seaplanes fly from Colombo to Koggala, a short drive along the coast.

Sources: Aman; Famous Hotels; Wikipedia.