Galle in 4 days

Coral and granite walls built by the Dutch East India Company from 1649 over a Portuguese fort, with fourteen bastions and wide walkways on top.

The Groote Kerk, built 1752 to 1755, one of the oldest Protestant churches in use in South Asia, its floor paved with 18th-century Dutch tombstones.

A 1671 Dutch warehouse against the ramparts, showing finds from wrecks in the bay, including the Avondster, sunk in 1659: cannons, pottery and navigation instruments.

A white 26.5-metre tower on Utrecht Bastion, at the fort's southern tip, built by the British in 1939 to replace one lost to fire.

A wooded headland closing Unawatuna bay, said in the Ramayana to be a piece of Himalaya dropped by Hanuman, topped by a Japanese Peace Pagoda.

A crescent bay east of the fort, sheltered by a reef, rebuilt after the 2004 tsunami with a narrower beach and seafront restaurants.

Between Koggala and Ahangama, fishermen perch on crossbars tied to poles in the shallows, a technique that appeared during the Second World War.

Off Dondra Head the continental shelf drops away close to shore, bringing blue whales within reach between November and April; boats leave early morning.