1,206-CITY ATLASSOURCE-BACKED CITY REFERENCE
Sri Lanka
Compare this sourced profile of Colombo, Sri Lanka before planning. Stable fields identify the place; confirm current transport, access and opening details with official sources.
01What the data says — and does not say
This page separates the checked GeoNames row for Colombo—648,034, Asia/Colombo, and source coordinates—from live travel claims. Those fields identify and compare the record; they do not prove current transport, accessibility, census totals, or a City Atlas Club visit.
Wikidata's localized description: largest city and de facto capital of Sri Lanka.
02This city's dataset fingerprint
The source row behind Colombo is GeoNames ID 1248991. Its recorded administrative path is Colombo District → Western Province → Sri Lanka, and GeoNames classifies the place as a capital of a political entity. Colombo occurs once as a primary city label in this atlas sample; the numeric ID remains the durable source key if names change. The city row itself was updated 2019-09-05; that date belongs to the source record, not to every transport or visitor detail in the real destination.
Within the fixed 1,206-record atlas, Colombo ranks 858 by recorded population. Inside the 1 selected Sri Lanka entries it ranks 1; inside the 632 entries in its broad region it ranks 472. Its 648,034 population value is 1.00 times the 648,034 median for the country cohort and 0.64 times the 1,008,426 regional median. Colombo is rank 1 among the 1 selected Sri Lanka entries, so a percentage band would overstate this small cohort. Colombo's recorded value stays within one quarter of the country-cohort median used here. These comparisons describe this selected dataset only; they are not current census rankings or official urban-area boundaries.
Colombo's three nearest other atlas coordinates are Tirunelveli at 310.756 km with 1,435,844 recorded people; Thiruvananthapuram at 363.004 km with 788,271 recorded people; Madurai at 382.395 km with 1,465,625 recorded people. The closest-to-farthest distance spread is 71.639 km. Compared with Tirunelveli, Colombo's recorded population is 0.45 times as large. Against Colombo, Tirunelveli follows Tirunelveli Kattabo → Tamil Nadu → India in the source. Its point has higher latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the selected India cohort rather than Sri Lanka, uses Asia/Kolkata instead of Asia/Colombo, and carries second-order administrative seat rather than capital of a political entity. Its recorded population is above Colombo's. Against Colombo, Thiruvananthapuram follows Thiruvananthapuram → Kerala → India in the source. Its point has higher latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the selected India cohort rather than Sri Lanka, uses Asia/Kolkata instead of Asia/Colombo, and carries first-order administrative seat rather than capital of a political entity. Its recorded population is above Colombo's. Against Colombo, Madurai follows Madurai → Tamil Nadu → India in the source. Its point has higher latitude and lower longitude; it belongs to the selected India cohort rather than Sri Lanka, uses Asia/Kolkata instead of Asia/Colombo, and carries second-order administrative seat rather than capital of a political entity. Its recorded population is above Colombo's. Its nearest-neighbor distance ranks 1,117 of 1,206 from shortest to longest in the same snapshot. Colombo's nearest-coordinate gap belongs to the wider half of atlas distances. This pattern can reveal whether other catalog references are geographically close, but it cannot establish whether a border crossing is possible or practical, or whether rail, road, fare, or journey-time connections exist. Read as one record signature, GeoNames 1248991, the coordinate pair 6.9355 / 79.8487, country rank 1 of 1, and neighbor GeoNames 1254361 at 310.756 km bind Colombo to a reproducible comparison. That combined key distinguishes the row; it is not a recommendation or evidence of a physical connection.
Colombo's reference point is 6.9355° north and 79.8487° east. The IANA identifier Asia/Colombo is shared by 1 city rows in this catalog, while the GeoNames class PPLC is shared by 129 rows. Colombo's row carries both second- and first-order administrative labels. Colombo's point falls in the near-equatorial coordinate band used by this atlas's row checks. Colombo's time-zone field defines the narrower catalog cohort; its place class is shared more broadly. GeoNames supplies no elevation for Colombo, so the profile preserves that missing value instead of guessing terrain. Together these fields form a reproducible identity check for this page, not a claim about walkability, climate or accessibility.
03Nearby atlas references
Colombo's closest other entries in this atlas are Tirunelveli (310.756 km), Thiruvananthapuram (363.004 km), Madurai (382.395 km).
04Verify before you book
Before visiting Colombo, confirm changing decisions with current first-party sources:
Read how City Atlas Club verifies changing travel facts →05Sources and freshness
GeoNames updated the row 2019-09-05; the atlas checked the dataset 2026-08-04. Available Wikidata fields were verified in the same run.
GeoNames data: CC BY 4.0. Wikidata labels and descriptions: CC0 1.0.