Sights in Jaffna
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Sri Nagavihara International Buddhist Centre
For Buddhists there’s the solitary Sri Nagavihara International Buddhist Centre which was quickly rebuilt after government forces retook Jaffna in 1995.
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Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil
Approximately 2km northeast of the centre, the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil is the most impressive religious building in Jaffna and one of the most significant Hindu temple complexes in Sri Lanka. Its sacred deity, Murugan (or Skanda), is central to temple activity, especially during the punctual, cacophonic pujas (5am, 10am, noon, 4pm and 5pm), when offerings are made to his brass-framed image and other Hindu deities like Ganesh, Murugan’s elephant-headed brother, in shrines surrounding the inner sanctum.
The kovil’s 15th-century structure fell victim to Portuguese destructive ruthlessness in the 17th century; the current one dates from 1734. Its beautifully maintained larg…
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Mavira Thuyilim Illam
LTTE martyrs are recognised in numerous Jaffna-area memorials, one common motif of which is a helmet on an upturned gun. Most were damaged, desecrated or destroyed in 1995, when Jaffna was retaken by the SLA, but after 2002 many were patched up or rebuilt.
Perhaps the most sobering is the Mavira Thuyilim Illam (Martyrs’ Sleeping House) at Kopay, just beyond the city’s northeastern limits. Around 2000 grave markers in neat rows commemorate Tiger cadres killed in action; the majority (the smaller memorials) are for Tigers whose bodies have not been retrieved. The movingly understated box of older tombstone shards commemorates the 1995 SLA bulldozing of the original graveyar…
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Jaffna Archaeological Museum
This unkempt but interesting museum is hidden away at the end of a messy garden behind a cubic concrete events hall that looks rather like a masonic lodge. Asking for directions may elicit odd responses since most locals don’t think of or refer to it as a museum. At the door are a rusty pair of Dutch cannons from the fort and a set of whale bones. Inside, the most interesting items are 11th-century Buddha torsos found at Kantarodai, a poorly conserved life-sized portrait of Queen Victoria and the 1845 palanquin of Point Pedro’s mudiyalar (district governor). He must have been very small.
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SJV Selvanayakum Monument
The strange, top-heavy concrete pillar almost beside the Public Library is the SJV Selvanayakum Monument, celebrating the founder of the Tamil Federal Party. His somewhat Gandhiesque statue stands beside the monument.
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St John's
The tiny Anglican church of St John's looks like a Sussex chapel, but with the napped flints replaced by cut sandstone chunks in the walls. Appropriately enough there's a cricket pitch ranged behind.
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Muniyabarar Kovil
The small Muniyabarar Kovil is nestled above a curve of fortress moat and has an access tunnel into one of the remnant triangles of the outer defence wall (now used as a makeshift toilet).
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St Mary's Cathedral
Built along classical lines, St Mary’s Cathedral is astonishingly large, but it’s curious to see corrugated-iron roofing held up by such a masterpiece of wooden vaulting.
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St Martin's Seminary
Founded in 1850 and rebuilt in 1887 by French benefactors, St Martin's Seminary looks like a Cambridge college transplanted into a tropical garden.
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Martyr's Monolith
The Martyr’s Monolith which remembers 31 locals killed by the military in 1986 features a design of hands with broken chains grasping a flame.
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Kanabady Kovil
The grey columns of the Kanabady Kovil look dull by day but are appealingly mysterious when half-lit at night.
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Vaitheeswara Kovil
Vaitheeswara Kovil is unusally sparse, its blue-grey mass standing sentinel at the end of Kannathiddy Rd.
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Our Lady of Refuge Church
Our Lady of Refuge Church looks like a whitewashed version of a Gloucestershire village church.
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Pillaiyar Kovil
The modest Somasutharam Pillaiyar Kovil looks picturesque when viewed across its lily pond.
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Holy Family Convent
Colonnades and topiary make the Holy Family Convent a beautiful, peaceful oasis.
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St James'
The grandest church is St James', a classical Italianate edifice.
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SJV Chelvanayakum Monument
The strange, top-heavy pillar erected near the Jaffna Public Library is the SJV Chelvanayakum Monument, celebrating the founder of the Tamil Federal Party. His somewhat Gandhi-esque statue stands beside the monument.
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New Rest House
Tidy, good-value rooms with slightly tatty attached bathrooms in a house-restaurant with great food (breakfast Rs 150, meals Rs 200 to 300).
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Jaffna Public Library
Symbolically, one of the first major public buildings to be rebuilt after the 2002 ceasefire was the Jaffna Public Library. Architects kept true to the original neo-Mughal design and books were donated from around the world. The earlier library (inaugurated 1841) had been lost in a fiery blaze set by pro-government mobs after the violent Jaffna District Council elections of July 1981. Few acts were more significant in the build-up to full-scale civil war. The world-renowned collection had included more than 90,000 volumes, including irreplaceable Tamil documents such as the one surviving copy of Yalpanam Vaipavama,a history of Jaffna.
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Clock Tower
An architectural curiosity, the spindly Clock Tower, has a Moorish domed top which makes it look like it belongs somewhere in North Africa.
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