Southern Province, Sri Lanka — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Southern Province known for?

Water lies to the south, the west and the east of the Southern Province, which leaves only its northern edge in contact with the rest of Sri Lanka and gives the province a coastline on three sides. Galle holds the capital. The seventh largest of the nine provinces by area, it runs its administration from that one city.

Where is Southern Province?

Four provinces and one ocean enclose the Southern Province. Sabaragamuwa Province and Uva Province lie along its northern edge, Eastern Province meets it to the north-east and Western Province to the north-west, so every land border it has runs across the top of the province. The rest is water.

The Indian Ocean stands to the south, the west and the east, which puts open water on three sides of it. Galle is the capital. The city is the administrative seat of a province that ranks seventh among the nine of Sri Lanka by area, which makes it compact by the standards of the country's provinces.

Tropical ground throughout. The province lies north of the equator inside the tropical band, and the Indian Ocean along three of its edges is the nearest thing it has to a moderating agent. The boundary is a nineteenth-century one.

Southern Province dates from 1833, and the provinces of Sri Lanka carried no legal status of their own until 1987, when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka created provincial councils. Nine provinces divide the country. This is one of them, held between four neighbours and the Indian Ocean, and administered from Galle.

What is Southern Province like?

The Indian Ocean sets the terms of life here. A province with water on its southern, western and eastern sides is a coastal province before it is anything else, and that orientation runs through the way the Southern Province works and is travelled. Galle carries the province.

The capital concentrates the institutions and public business of the province, and it is the name most outsiders attach to this part of Sri Lanka. Inland lie the neighbours. Sabaragamuwa Province and Uva Province run along the north, with Eastern Province to the north-east and Western Province to the north-west, so this province meets four separate administrations on land and one ocean on water.

That makes it a corner. A province bounded on three sides by the Indian Ocean has only one direction to look inland, and the border with those four provinces is the whole of its landward life. Provincial identity here is recent in law.

The provinces of Sri Lanka existed through the nineteenth century without legal standing, and only the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka gave them councils of their own in 1987. The boundary itself is older. Southern Province has held its shape since 1833, and the combination of Galle, four provincial neighbours and the Indian Ocean has defined it for the whole of that time.

What is the history of Southern Province?

The outline dates from 1833. Sri Lanka's provinces were drawn through the nineteenth century as administrative divisions and had no legal status of their own until 1987, when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka established provincial councils. Galle holds the seat.

The capital of the Southern Province anchors the administration of a province that fronts the Indian Ocean and backs onto four neighbours.

What is the climate of Southern Province?

The Indian Ocean reaches around three sides of the Southern Province, which makes the sea, rather than any inland range, the agent that governs conditions across the province. Tropical throughout. Galle sits north of the equator in the same band as the rest of Sri Lanka, and what the ocean brings to this coast is what the province gets.

How do you get to Southern Province?

Only one side is reachable by land. Every road into the Southern Province crosses from Sabaragamuwa Province, Uva Province, Eastern Province or Western Province along the northern boundary, since the Indian Ocean closes the other three. Galle takes the traffic.

The provincial capital is where those approaches converge and where most journeys through the province begin.