Colombo 7 — Cinnamon Gardens

Cinnamon Gardens is the quietest part of central Colombo and the most expensive. Wide, shaded roads run between walled houses on large plots, and the pace drops noticeably the moment you turn off Ward Place or Bauddhaloka Mawatha.

Most of the embassies, the national museum and Viharamahadevi Park sit inside the same square kilometre, which is why so little of the land ever comes to market.

Two markets run side by side. The first is period houses on 20 to 60 perches, usually sold for the land; the second is a growing supply of apartments in towers along Independence Avenue and Guildford Crescent, which is where most buyers under forty end up.

Everything in the commercial centre is within a fifteen-minute drive outside peak hours, and Fort railway station is about twenty minutes away. Traffic on the approaches is the real constraint, not distance.