A cultural calendar of its own, anchored by Nallur and a long, steady revival.
Jaffna keeps a calendar unlike anywhere else on the island. Its centrepiece is the Nallur Kandaswamy temple festival, which runs for weeks in the middle of the year and turns the streets around the kovil into a nightly procession of music, offerings and devotees, ending with the chariot festival and the water-cutting. Around it sits a full Hindu temple calendar, the Catholic feast days of the coastal parishes and the islands, Thai Pongal in January and Deepavali in the autumn — most of it free, public and best experienced by walking into it.
The rest has grown steadily since the road and the trains reopened. The public library and the town's halls host book launches, lectures, exhibitions and film screenings; music and dance programmes draw performers from Colombo and abroad; and Duraiappah Stadium takes football, athletics and school sports meets. Jaffna also fills for the diaspora, particularly around the festival season and the December holidays, so accommodation books out long before anything is ticketed. Festival dates follow the Tamil calendar and move each year — check the temple's own announcement.
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