The Galle Face is a promenade which stretches for a half kilometre along the coast in the heart of the financial and business district of Colombo, Sri Lanka. The promenade was initially laid out in 1859 by the Governor of what was then British Ceylon, Sir Henry Ward, and was also used for horse racing and as a golf course, although the original Galle Face Green extended over a much larger area than is seen today. It was known as the Colpitty Race Course.
The Galle Face Green is currently a 5 hectare ribbon strip of land between Galle Road and the Indian Ocean which is now the largest open space in Colombo. This is a popular destination for children, vendors, teenagers, lovers, kite flyers, merrymakers and all those who want to indulge in their favorite pastimes next to the sea under the open sky. On Saturday and Sunday evenings, the land is busy with day trippers, picnickers and food vendors. There are two large hotels that border the strip; the Ceylon Inter-Continental Hotel and at the other by the quaint Galle Face Hotel, one of Sri Lanka's oldest and most popular hotels, with a variety of old world charm including old furniture, hand carved doors, balconies and high ceilings.
Radio Ceylon and subsequently the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, the oldest radio station in South Asia, has recorded many programs here from their outside broadcast input in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Galle Face Green is administered and maintained by the Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka (UDA).
Famous quotes containing the words face and/or green:
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)