The Galle Face Hotel opened in 1864, five years before the Suez Canal. From 1869, the Galle Face was known as “the most luxurious hotel East of Suez” after a Suez Canal trip. The Taj Mahal in Mumbai, the Strand in Yangon, the Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Georgetown on Penang, and Raffles in Singapore are among South East Asia’s most famous hotels. The Oriental in Bangkok, Metropole in Hanoi, Peninsula in Hong Kong, Manila in Manila, and Imperial in Tokyo complete “the maidens of the East” list.
Galle Face Hotel has hosted almost every significant event. The oldest and best hotel “East of Suez,” it has hosted everyone who has visited Sri Lanka.
Emperors, empresses, kings, queens, authors, entertainers, and exhibiting artists have visited. It has housed diplomats, doctors, clerks, and travelling salespeople. Marriages sealed at the Galle Face Hotel ‘last forever’.
Romantics appreciate the nightly flag-lowering ritual and the island’s lone seawater pool. Pimm’s o’clock, bars, and terraces are where they discuss the best flights and trains to Sri Lanka’s highlands, just as planters and traders 100 years earlier discussed rubber, coffee, and tea prices, the new road to Kandy, and the Prince of Wales’s visit.
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