Kotte Museum
Archaeology museum in Kotte, Sri Lanka
Kotte Museum (Sinhala: කෝට්ටේ කෞතුකාගාරය) is an archaeological Museum in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Sri Lanka. It is located at Bangala junction in Ethul Kotte, on the Borella-Pitakotte main road. The museum serves as the regional museum for the country's Western Province and is maintained by the archaeological department of Sri Lanka.
The museum was first established in 1992 as E. W. Perera Memorial Museum in Ihala Walawwa, the residence of E. W. Perera, a prominent figure in the Sri Lankan independence movement, and was declared open to the public in 1995.
The museum building consists of five exhibition rooms and is used to display a variety of archaeological antiquities recovered from Kotte and its surrounding area. They include various regional flags, clothing, statues, coins, swords, knives, guns, weapons, pottery, maps, and a collection of items used by E. W. Perera and items donated by Douglas Ranasinghe.
“Kotte Museum” enters the record as archaeology museum in Kotte, Sri Lanka. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kotte, Museum and Archaeology can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Kotte Museum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Kotte, Museum and Archaeology provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 10, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q29388899. Authority coordinates are 6.893, 79.905. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992 and 1995.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Kotte Museum”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Kotte Museum primary sources, Kotte Museum archive and Kotte research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Kotte Museum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.