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Strictly speaking the administrative center of Sri Lanka is Sri Jayawardanapura, and Colombo is merely the commercial center. Many Sri Lankans, when asked what the capital of the country is you may still say Colombo.
The city is small by any standard. The Colombo's population is less than two million, and it takes just forty minutes from one end of the city to another. That too in the rush hour. Yet Colombo is home to some of the tallest buildings in South Asia.
The city is made up of 15 small towns, each of them being unique. One such town Maradana is perhaps the most densly populated areas within the whole country. In stark contrast the Fort area is almost completely devoid of houses or apartments
Many of the high rises in the country are concentrated in near Fort, Which gets its name from being a British fortress in the 19th Century. The Beira Lake in fort was once a marshland, flooded during the British rule to provide greater security for the garrison. Many of the street names in Colombo date back to the British period with almost every governor having a street named after him.
It was the British rulers who first made Colombo the Capital of Sri Lanka
in the 19th Century. The administrative center was shifted to
Sri Jayawardanapura in 1985. Sri Jayawardanapura, is part of the the District Of Colombo and is just
outside the Colombo city limits.
