14 Famous Churches in Colombo, Sri Lanka: History, Timings and Visiting Tips

If you ask a Colombo tuk-tuk driver for the famous church, this is where you end up. St. Anthony’s began as a mud-walled chapel built by an Indian priest, Fr. Antonio, during Dutch rule. He is usually said to have come from Cochin, which is one explanation for the name Kochchikade. He worked here when Catholic worship was banned and local fishermen hid him. The chapel was enlarged in 1806. The present church was started in 1828 and consecrated on 1 June 1834, then enlarged again from 1938 and reconsecrated in 1940. The statue of St. Anthony inside was brought from Goa in 1822, and a relic of the saint, a fragment of his tongue, is kept in a glass reliquary near the entrance beside his statue.

What makes it different is the congregation. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims queue beside Catholics to light candles, tie a request to the railings or simply sit in the cool nave. Tuesday is St. Anthony’s day, and the street outside fills from early morning. The annual feast falls on 13 June, with a flag-hoisting about ten days before and the main Mass on the 13th.

The shrine was one of the churches struck in the Easter Sunday attacks of 21 April 2019. It was restored by the Sri Lanka Navy and reopened on 12 June 2019, and today it is calm and busy again. Expect a bag check at the gate. For Mass schedules, see our page on St. Anthony’s Church timings.

This is the answer if someone asks which is the largest church in Colombo, and in Sri Lanka. St. Lucia’s holds up to 6,000 people, the building rises about 46 m to its grey dome, and the facade draws on St. Peter’s in Rome. The Dutch granted this Kotahena land to Colombo’s Catholics in 1779, when a small chapel already stood here. The cathedral that replaced it took decades. The nave opened for worship in 1881, and the scaffolding finally came down in 1902. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Colombo, and Pope John Paul II prayed here on 20 January 1995.

Inside, white Renaissance-style columns run the length of the nave towards a marble altar, and the light is soft even at noon. Four bells were shipped from Marseilles, and the largest, at about 4,300 lb, was christened in 1903. Come on a weekday morning to have the space nearly to yourself. On Christmas Eve, this is the church that fills first.

Wolvendaal is the oldest purpose-built church on this list and one of the most important Dutch buildings left in Sri Lanka. Its foundations were laid in 1749 and the church was dedicated on 6 March 1757. The name means wolf’s dale. Early Europeans mistook the jackals in the valley below for wolves. Built as a Greek cross with walls about 1.5 m thick, it has the feel of a fortress from the outside and a cool meeting hall inside. Read our guide to visiting Wolvendaal Church for directions and tips.

Look for the governor’s state pew, ebony and calamander chairs from the 1600s and 1700s, a baptismal font from 1667 on a carved tripod, and the raised pulpit typical of Dutch Reformed churches. Tombstones of Dutch officials are set into the floor, some moved here from the Dutch church inside the Fort (the Kasteel Kerk), which was pulled down in 1813. The church also holds the oldest organ in Sri Lanka. It now belongs to the Christian Reformed Church in Sri Lanka, the Dutch Reformed Church’s successor, and still holds Sunday services.

St. Peter’s has the strangest past of any church here. The site held a Dominican monastery and a charity hall in Portuguese times, and around 1666 the Dutch turned the building into the governor’s residence, where council meetings and banquets were held. When the British took over, they converted it into a garrison church. Thomas Middleton, the first Bishop of Calcutta, consecrated it on 22 May 1821.

You can still read the Dutch building in it. The tall gable walls and clerestory windows survive, and a verandah with classical columns was added in 1832. The graveyard holds the tomb of William Tolfrey, who translated the Bible into Pali and Sinhala, and the church has a memorial to Sir Charles Peter Layard, the first Mayor of Colombo. During the civil war access was tightly controlled because it faces the harbour beside Police Headquarters.

St. Thomas’ sits on a low rise in the Ginthupitiya part of Kotahena, a short walk north of Pettah and close to the harbour. It held its first service on 16 July 1816, which makes it one of the oldest Anglican churches in Sri Lanka. The site is older still. A Portuguese Catholic church stood here first, and local tradition holds it was built over a chapel of the Persian Nestorian Christians. The link to St. Thomas the Apostle, who is said to have preached in South India, is legend rather than recorded history, but it explains the name.

The building is simple, white and low, and the climb up its steps is part of the visit. Dense streets now crowd around it, so come for the history rather than a harbour panorama.

All Saints’ is the Borella parish church and one of the most popular wedding churches in Colombo, so on a Saturday you may arrive to rice, bridesmaids and a brass band. The current Gothic building rose on foundations laid on 24 August 1935. Inside, stained glass lines the nave, and a window above the altar shows Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Parish accounts describe a carillon of 25 bells cast in Germany, each named after a saint.

It is a working parish church, and the car park fills on Sunday and Wednesday Mass days. A weekday visit is calmer.

St. Mary’s on Lauries Road is known for its coloured glass. When the morning sun comes through the windows, the floor of the nave is dappled red, blue and gold, which is why photographers like the hours before 10 am. Bambalapitiya began as an outstation of St. Philip Neri’s in Pettah and became its own parish in 1886, with Fr. Louis Coquil OMI as first parish priest. The parish went on to help found Holy Family Convent and St. Peter’s College, two of Colombo’s best-known schools.

During the Second World War, British and Australian troops based in Colombo 4 came here for Mass. Today it is a busy family parish and a common wedding venue.

This is the Anglican cathedral of the Diocese of Colombo and the seat of the Bishop of Colombo. It is young by Colombo standards. The foundation stone went down on 28 October 1968 and the cathedral was consecrated on 7 November 1973. Architects Tom Neville Wynne-Jones and P. H. Wilson Peiris gave it a hexagonal plan borrowed from Buddhist temple architecture, built in concrete, so it looks nothing like the Gothic churches elsewhere on this list.

The Church of Ceylon holds its major ceremonies here, including the consecration of its bishops. If you want an English-language Sunday service in a calm, leafy part of the city, it is the simplest choice.

On Olcott Mawatha at the southern edge of the Pettah bazaar, opposite Fort railway station, St. Philip Neri’s has a Corinthian front modelled on St. John Lateran in Rome. The church is more than 150 years old and grew out of a small chapel that kept Catholic worship alive in the Dutch period. Vicar Apostolic Joseph Bravi lived in that chapel. Its early congregation included Bharatha traders from Pettah and Catholic sailors whose ships called at Colombo.

Locals once counted it with Fort railway station as one of Pettah’s two landmarks. It is an easy stop between St. Peter’s and Wolvendaal on the walking route below.

Scottish settlers founded the Scots Kirk in the 1840s, laying the foundation of their first church on Prince Street in Fort in 1841 and opening it for worship in 1842. As the city spread south, the congregation moved in 1906 to the present building at 73 Galle Road. It is Gothic Perpendicular in style, adapted for the heat with deep shade and wide openings.

The kirk belongs to the International Presbytery of the Church of Scotland and is one of only three of its churches outside Europe. It sits back from the traffic of Galle Road behind a small garden, which makes it a quiet break on a Kollupitiya afternoon.

If you want the oldest church site in the south of the city, come here. The Portuguese built a Catholic church on this spot in the 16th century, dedicated to Nossa Senhora dos Milagres, Our Lady of Miracles. A well nearby was believed to heal, and the area still carries the name Milagiriya from the Portuguese word milagre. The Dutch destroyed that church. The British built the present Anglican church in 1848, under Rev. Joseph Thurstan, and dedicated it to St. Paul.

It is a parish church with services in English, Sinhala and Tamil, and a small, shady compound that feels far from Galle Road.

St. Michael’s is the Anglo-Catholic church of Colombo, known for incense, vestments and a strong choir. A chapel stood on the site from the 1860s. The church was renamed and dedicated on St. Michael’s Day, 29 September 1887, to tell it apart from the older St. Thomas’ in the north of the city, and the same year it began a daily Eucharist. Two aisles were added in 1896.

Visit on a Sunday morning if you want the music. On a weekday it is cool, dim and nearly empty.

The Dutch Reformed tradition did not stay in Pettah. As Colombo’s Burgher families moved south in the 1800s, a congregation formed in Bambalapitiya, and the church’s own history traces it to a request written in 1886. The Christian Reformed Church in Sri Lanka runs its office on Galle Road.

The building is plain next to the Catholic cathedrals, but the congregation carries one of the longest Protestant histories in Asia. A Sunday service is the best time to see it in use.

The national basilica stands on a hill at Tewatte near Ragama, about 15 km north of Colombo Fort. Work began in 1950 and it was consecrated in 1974, after Pope Paul VI raised it to a minor basilica. The large domed church sits in a complex with grottos, a crypt and a museum.

Its feast on 4 February draws crowds from across the island. On other days it is quiet enough for a calm half-day trip, and it is on the way to the airport and Negombo if you fly out from Katunayake.