Colombo 02

Colombo 02, known locally as Slave Island and officially renamed Kompanna Vidiya in 2023, is the peninsula immediately south of Colombo Fort, in the Colombo Municipal Council area. It is bounded by Beira Lake to the east and the coastal railway line, with Fort, Union Place and Kollupitiya as its neighbours.

The English name comes from the area's use as a holding site for enslaved people under Portuguese and Dutch rule; the Sinhala and Tamil names, both meaning roughly "Company Street", refer to a Dutch East India Company depot once based here. The area is dense with landmarks: Gangaramaya Temple and the Seema Malaka pavilion sit on Beira Lake, and Galle Face Green and the Lotus Tower, open to the public since mid-September 2022, are both within about two kilometres.

Slave Island (Kompanna Veediya) station, on a stretch of the Coastal Line dating from the 1870s, serves the area directly, and Colombo Fort station is a short distance further north; road-routing distances between the two vary depending on the streets used, since several run one-way around the Fort and Beira Lake. There is no expressway interchange nearby, and peak-hour traffic on the Fort-Galle Face corridor is a known weak point.

Nawaloka Hospital, on H.K. Dharmadasa Mawatha, and Asiri Central Hospital are the area's main hospitals. For shopping, Colombo City Centre and One Galle Face Mall are both close by, and Cinnamon Life at City of Dreams, which opened in August 2025, added a further retail, hotel and entertainment complex. Beira Lake's walking paths and Viharamahadevi Park, a short distance away, are the main green space used by people living in this part of the city.

A multi-year public-private clean-up and dredging programme for Beira Lake was announced in 2026; its results are not yet confirmed. New residential developments in Colombo 02 are listed further down this page.

The area's density of landmarks, its closeness to the Fort and its mix of hotels, offices and entertainment tend to draw buyers who work in or near the Fort and want a short commute, along with those attracted to the Beira Lake and Galle Face end of the city rather than a purely residential suburb.