Forget the Suite Life. Meet Cinnamon Life in Colombo!

After a few days at South Asia’s largest integrated resort, I knew I’d be coming back for more.

28 May 2025

I left the lobby knowing I was coming back. Not just to Cinnamon Life, but to Colombo, to Sri Lanka and to everything this experience stood for.

With 687 rooms, 12 restaurants, and a sweeping cantilevered silhouette inspired by Sinhalese sacred geometry, Cinnamon Life is Colombo’s newest and boldest arrival. Designed by Balmond Studio, the architectural marvel isn’t just the largest integrated resort in South Asia — it’s a sensory map of Sri Lanka’s past and future.

It’s rare to realise, as you pull away from a hotel, that you will miss the people as much as the place. I should have seen this coming. When, upon first view, the structure looked like an archaeological puzzle. When the lobby held a Chathurika Jayani painting that made you smile and sigh at the same time, when bursts of orange collided with prismatic textures past the escalator. And when the lighting was just right — not glam and showy, not moody and faking aspiration, really just right.

Thus began my stay at Cinnamon Life, City of Dreams. At check-in, you stand facing the anchoring Lotus Tower, pleasantly at eye level from the 24th floor. I had arrived.

My first sunset in Colombo found me at the Flux Lounge. On the right lay development in tow. On the left, a city returning home. In the front, the glittering Arabian Sea. On the table, Prosecco and Ceylon Cashews. Here, dreams and reality intersect, like the makings of a modern art piece.

Photograph courtesy Cinnamon Life, City of Dreams

Architecture as the origin story

The design walk-through with James Balmond, the creative director of Balmond Studio and the architecture team that brought the hotel to life, resonated deeply. He spoke of human life, its pulse and its prismatic, kaleidoscopic rhythms reflected in an organisational system of patterns and prints within the lobbies and ballrooms.

That archaeological puzzle of a building shape? It was derived from a simple drawing inspired by guardstones and moonstones, the markers of auspicious thresholds in ancient Sinhalese culture. A cantilevered structure followed. Then came the glass, the iconic details — everything positioning Cinnamon Life as the icon heralding a new arrival, a mark to a future city of Colombo. As a final touch, the sun, giver of life and light, rises bold and bright from the lobby itself — a composition that runs 5 storeys with a depth of 200 metres, using 8 different materials.

James was one of the artists making this canvas of dreams come to life, paint still on his fingertips. Sketches still in his pocket.

Art that doesn’t just decorate

Speaking of artists, contemporary art showcasing the country’s dreams stands proudly on walls across the property. Curated by Saskia Fernando Gallery, they turn your stroll to breakfast into an indulgent art walk. While sauntering back from Kurundu Spa (genuinely the best massage I have ever gotten), I notice a large inverted bucket. Titled Before Nineteen Eighty Three by Gayan Prageeth, the artwork uses an 8-foot bucket as a symbol of ethnic profiling and memory erasure. It depicts a landscape of the Jaffna Peninsula, which experienced significant transformation after 1983. Yet another bridge to what once was on the foundation of the future.

Local roots, global vision

When I sit across from CEO and GM Sanjiv Hulugalle, at a stellar Cantonese lunch (one of the 8 cuisine-forward restaurants on the hotel premises), the beautiful meal itself becomes a mere backdrop to the conversation — real, soulful and once again levelling. It turns out that John Keells Holdings, the owner of the Cinnamon chain of hotels, has made it a point to bring Sri Lankans leading hospitality from across the world back to their home base to build this new page-turning project for the country. This joy and humility radiate through their dialogue.

Rooms designed for rest

The rooms paint a calm and confident picture. A white canvas with calculated bursts of colour and smooth marble, uber-comfortable bedding and plush curtains that yield that glittering ocean at the whim of a button.

Cinnamon Life is a hotel you could stay in for days and never need to leave. But you should. Take that walk down the promenade to Galle Face. See Colombo stitch itself back together. Because this isn’t just a hotel. It’s a canvas. And the paint is still drying.