National Maritime Museum, Maritime museum in Galle Fort, Sri Lanka.

The National Maritime Museum occupies a former Dutch warehouse inside Galle Fort and displays shipwreck finds, models of coastal vessels, and marine creatures from the waters of the southern coast. The collection focuses on the Galle area and covers the seafaring history of this stretch of coastline.

The Dutch warehouse was built in 1717, not 1671, and part of it is set into the thickness of the rampart, with the Old Gate's 1669 VOC inscription cutting through the ground floor. After independence it housed administrative offices until they moved to the new secretariat outside the fort, leaving it derelict. It opened as a museum on 9 May 1992; the 2004 tsunami flooded it to 2.2 metres and destroyed the adjoining UNESCO unit. Renovated with a Dutch grant of Rs. 177 million, it reopened on 4 March 2010.

The exhibition shows fishing tools and navigation models used by the coastal communities of southern Sri Lanka. Walking through the halls gives a direct sense of how life at sea shaped daily routines along this coast.

The museum sits inside Galle Fort and is easy to reach on foot since the fort is compact and walkable. A morning visit tends to be more comfortable, as the rooms are not air-conditioned.

A real whale skeleton is displayed on the museum's roof, giving a sense of the size of the creatures that live in the waters off Sri Lanka's southern coast. Inside, part of the collection comes from around twenty shipwrecks found close to shore.