Jaffna

Jaffna is the principal city of Sri Lanka's Northern Province, the cultural and commercial centre of Tamil Sri Lanka, situated on a flat limestone peninsula extending toward India. The seventeenth-century Dutch fort, one of the largest in South Asia, survives in reasonable condition alongside the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, the region's most important Hindu temple and the site of a large annual festival. The surrounding Jaffna Peninsula and its offshore islands — connected by causeways — hold a distinctive flat landscape of lagoons, palmyra palms, and fishing communities.