Mostly well maintained with array of objects like sculpture, paintings, textiles, art forms and various other objects. Throws light on Sri Lanka history, however doesn’t address much about colonial period except for a few rock samples and other objects. You need at least 2 hours as it’s quite big. One gets tempted to buy combined ticket with National Museum of Natural history, the other one is not so good, can be avoided.

Struggled for time as we were part of a hotel arranged visit in which we had just 40 mins to whizz around. Place seemed to have a lot of interest- including a room dedicated to displaying items taken by the Dutch and returned years later. Another with a throne taken by the English and returned years later (theme emerging?)

Great museum that can last anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours, depending on interests. Majority of interesting exhibitions are in the first few rooms and it tapers off a lot afterwards, so if pressed for time focus on the first third or so. It is bigger than it looks.

Some really good displays of Sri Lanka's history, culture and environment, but let down by some poor lighting and patchy display information. The building itself is grand and you get to walk some of the verandahs between museum display rooms. Some of the artefacts recently returned from the Netherlands were particularly interesting. Don't miss the throne room.

We visited as part of our tour of Sri Lanka We were told no photography which wasn't a problem. We were shown around by our guide which was useful as he added his own insights and views. The museum itself is an impressive building with pretty impressive grounds. We wandered in and it was pretty warm, there were fans set up to try and keep the building a bit cooler. There were a lot of different artifacts however there was a lot of seemingly repetitive and underwhelming items on display too. There seemed a lot of coins and the like as well as a whole section devoted to masonry with carvings and while there were probably people wanting to see them it seemed like an awful lot of similar items. There were collections various collections. Some more interesting than others. There was an animatronic display which was quite good too. This for me was very much a one visit location. Highlight was the Ice cream we had during our visit. as well as a Leopard photography display. We popped in and while it was a bit warm with no air con this was actually quite interesting.