Unusual garden

Elements of Italian Renaissance gardens, English landscaping, Japanese garden art, & the water gardens of ancient Sri Lanka are all blended classical Greco-Roman statues pose insouciantly, and bacchanalian grotesque sculptures glare from tangles of undergrowth. Precise, orthogonal lines give way unexpectedly to baroque, serpentine contours. Engulfing everything is foliage of a deep, intoxicating green, broken occasionally by the hues and textures of wrought iron, stone, concrete, and clay. In the midst of Bawa’s personal, tropical Eden, all senses are heightened: to the views of the garden and the lake dappled by light and shade, to the sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves, and to the smell of the wet earth and grass after rain. Lunuganga is an experience of almost overwhelming aesthetic pleasure, and remains Bawa’s most extravagant creation and testament.

The entire estate has been preserved as Bawa left it at the moment of his death, and is now run as a country house boutique hotel offering an unparalleled opportunity to experience the architect’s vision as he intended: by inhabiting it.