A Look Back at 1960s Colombo

I discovered a one minute YouTube video by the Huntley Film Archives called “Colombo, Sri Lanka, around 1960. Archive film 95260”. The quality isn’t the best with a watermark, but it is in colour and it does offer a glimpse into what Colombo, Sri Lanka was like in the 1960s. This blog post is a companion piece to my blog post “A Look Back at 1970s Colombo” from a few years ago. I’ll be embedding the video below and will be giving my thoughts on it.

 

We see ships at sea in Colombo Port. We are soon joined by the Colombo Port Commission building in the same area which is now the Sri Lanka Ports Authority building. We see people walk outside the building. The video then moves into the Colombo roads. I see a brief flash of a double decker bus. We see the Grand Oriental Hotel. Interestingly, I attended a wedding at the Grand Oriental Hotel two years ago in December 2019. 

The Colombo Tram is featured. The Colombo Tram is a transport system that used to exist in Colombo, but was discontinued in 1960. I notice that some cars seem to be driving too close to the tram with them crossing the lines of the tram section. It’s my observation that some of the same type of small shops seen here still exist in Colombo. There are what appears to be vegetable stalls. We see the Colombo Tram again going through a narrow road with tiled roofs. It closes with an old building. I wonder what building this is.

  

It was good to see a look into 1960s Colombo. I notice that Colombo seems to have a strong British influence unlike now, which is no doubt as this was not long after colonialism. Colombo in the 1960s was a very busy city like how it has always been. If you have lived in Colombo in the 1960s or been in Colombo during that time, I hope this video brought back positive memories.