“Fort”, as the city is known locally, is an enchantingly peaceful enclave retaining the original grid-plan layout and even some of the Dutch street names. Its character can best be appreciated by having a drink in a large cane chair at the top of the newly restored Amangalla Hotel. Here the panorama of pale-brown tiled roofs and shady trees is as good as in a well-preserved Italian hill town.

Walking along the streets, it appears that few of the 18th-century Dutch houses with their columned verandas or stoeps have survived, but often they are simply hidden by later shopfronts or, in some cases, charming Art Deco frontages.

In the past few years some 50 houses have been bought and renovated by Europeans. Much of that has been fostered by Jack Eden, who manages a series of houses that can be rented (www.edenvillasonline.com). He bought a house in the Fort in 1999 and the next year his stepbrother, Rob Drummond, came to stay and fell in love with the old town, finding a former doctor’s surgery in Middle Street to restore. It is believed to be about 250 years old — towards the end of the Dutch period — with a columned stoep enclosed with louvres in the 19th century.

The appeal of Drummond’s house is that you could move in immediately. It is all in perfect trim, beautifully but simply furnished with all fittings to a very high standard in both kitchen and bathrooms.

“The walls are 3ft thick, built of coral and sand and held together by layers of plaster,” Drummond explains. “The house wasn’t in bad condition but low ceilings had been introduced and rooms subdivided. I’ve put back the windows to their original proportions but left the undulations in the plaster.” The main rooms are now open to the roof rafters, creating a welcome sense of cool and spaciousness. The large ground-floor bedrooms, which look out on to the stoep on either side of the entrance, each measure 20ft by 20ft and have sloping ceilings rising to the same height.

The entrance in the stoep retains the original doors and latticework. Inside the house other early doors remain. “They were covered in yellow paint. We scraped back, finding successive layers of green, blue, black and red as if all the houses in the Fort had been repainted in the same colour every 50 years,” Drummond says.

The unifying feature of the house is his white polished cement floor, which runs through all the rooms and out to the garden terrace. In Sri Lanka you take your shoes off as you enter the house and it is smooth underfoot.

The entrance corridor leads to a noble zaal or saloon running the full 50ft width of the house. As the garden is entirely walled in, the doorways into the garden are without doors, increasing the alfresco feel. The garden is inset with an inviting pool, alluringly lit at night. Around the pool is a new colonnade with white columns in Dutch style. On the right a derelict outbuilding has been cleverly rebuilt as a twostorey wing that opens on to a roof terrace with cushioned bench and lily pool.

The spacious kitchen, with green terrazzo worktops and teak cupboards, has been designed by Ranjan Aluwihare, the architect who carried out the renovation with Drummond. He grew up in England working with the decorator Nicky Haslam before settling in Sri Lanka.

The bathrooms in the two ground-floor bedrooms are ingeniously contrived. “I didn’t want boxed-in bathrooms in one corner. We’ve simply hidden the baths and basins behind a low wall so you don’t see them as you come in,” Drummond says.

In the zaal, Drummond has designed the large dining-room table — a single piece of wood supported on two steel cubes that were singed to give them patina. In a corner stand an unusual pair of square-ended propellers rescued from a redundant tea factory. On the walls are works by contemporary local artists as well as photographs by Sri Lanka’s most famous photographer, Lionel Wendt.

The house is cooled mainly with the help of numerous ceiling fans. Lighting is also very good, with hanging lanterns on copper chains, numerous ceiling spots as well as copper wall and floor lights. At night the garden is brought alive with uplighters. Rainwater is channelled down chains (a common practice in the Far East) into large copper pots running away through hidden drains. The garden is planted with bamboo, flowering frangipani and red palm.

The result is as smart as the most sophisticated villa in Provence or Tuscany. Drummond is a perfectionist who gives thought to every detail. He restored the house for himself and is leaving only to build an adventurous new house on a beautiful site beside a lake.

The house can be the door to a new life in the Tropics or a holiday home that can be let to earn an income. Galle is a seductive place. Fort has a life of its own separate from the busy modern town a little way outside the walls. There is a beguiling evening promenade along the ramparts as the sun sets across the Indian Ocean before drinks and dinner in the elegant colonial Galle Fort Hotel. The Amangalla has a luxurious spa that is open to visitors.

Just two miles away are the excellent sandy beaches of Unawatuna, lined with furnished beach bars hidden beneath the palm trees. On offer are cool beers, cocktails made with the superb local arak, succulent prawns and lobsters.

The Galle house is on sale for $475,000 (£251,000). Details: gallefortvilla@yahoo.co.uk

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