Wolvendaal Church

Lonely Planet review

The 1749 Wolvendaal Church is the most important Dutch building in Sri Lanka. When the church was founded, this now-crowded inner-city district was a wilderness beyond the city walls. The Europeans mistook the packs of roaming jackals for wolves, and the area became known as Wolf's Dale, or Wolvendaal in Dutch. The church is in the form of a Greek cross, with walls 1.5m thick, but the real treasure is its Dutch furniture.

The Dutch governors had a special pew made with elegant carved ebony chairs, and the workmanship in the wooden pulpit, baptismal font and lectern is just as beautiful.The stone floor includes the elaborate tombstones of five Dutch governors, moved here from an older Dutch church in Fort in 1813. The congregation dwindled as the Burgher community emigrated, but it still holds services - in Sinhala, English and Tamil - on Sunday mornings.