Trincomalee’s natural harbour – one of the finest deep-water anchorages in the Indian Ocean – gave the city strategic significance to successive colonial powers, and the resulting layers of Dutch, British, and Portuguese infrastructure remain visible in the fortifications and colonial-era architecture around the bay. The beaches of Nilaveli and Uppuveli to the north are wide, white-sand, and uncrowded by the standards of any comparable tropical Asian coastline. The Koneswaram Temple on Swami Rock, an ancient Hindu shrine on a headland directly above the harbour, is one of Sri Lanka’s most dramatically positioned sacred sites.