Sri Lanka
Northern Province
Jaffna District

Jaffna

Jaffna District is the northernmost region of , and one of the oldest inhabited places on the island. It is populated mainly by Tamil speaking people.
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Photo: Anton 17, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Photo: Gane Kumaraswamy, CC BY-SA 2.0.
  • Type: City with 600,000 residents
  • Description: capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka
  • Also known as: “Jaffna Town”, “Jaffna, Sri Lanka”, “Yalpanam”, “Yalpanapattinam”, and “Yalppanam”

Places of Interest

Highlights include Jaffna Public Library and Jaffna Fort.

Library
Photo: Anton 17, CC BY-SA 3.0.
is located in Jaffna, . It is one of Jaffna's most notable landmarks, and is run by the Jaffna Municipal Council. The library was built in 1933 and is Sri Lanka's second main public Library, only rivalled by Colombo Public Library During the early 1980s, it was one of the biggest libraries in Asia, containing over 97,000 books and manuscripts.

Ruins
Photo: Rehman, CC BY-SA 4.0.
is a fort built by the at Jaffna, , in 1618 under Phillippe de Oliveira following the Portuguese invasion of Jaffna. The fort is located near the coastal village of Gurunagar.

Hospital
is a government hospital in Jaffna, . It is the leading hospital in the and the only hospital in the province controlled by the central government in .

Places in the Area

Nearby places include Nallur and Kokkuvil.

Town
is an affluent suburb in Jaffna, . It is located 3 km south from Jaffna city centre. is most famous for , one of Sri Lanka's most sacred place of pilgrimage for Sri Lankan Hindus.

Village
Kokuvil is a suburb in the northern city of Jaffna.

Town
Photo: உமாபதி, CC BY-SA 3.0.
is a suburb of the city of Jaffna in northern . The suburb is divided into eight village officer divisions whose combined population was 10,750 at the 2012 census.

Jaffna

Latitude
9.6651° or 9° 39′ 54″ north
Longitude
80.0093° or 80° 0′ 34″ east
Population
600,000
Elevation
7 metres (23 feet)
IATA airport code
JAF
United Nations Location Code
LK JAF
Open location code
6MX2M285+2P
Open­Street­Map ID
node 2050947471
Open­Street­Map feature
place=­city
Geo­Names ID
1242833
Wiki­data ID
Q215277
This page is based on OpenStreetMap, GeoNames, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikivoyage.
We’d love your help improving our open data sources. Thank you for contributing.

Satellite Map

Discover Jaffna from above in high-definition satellite imagery.
© Stadia Maps, Airbus DS, CNES, PlanetObserver, and Copernicus

In Other Languages

From Arabic to Western Armenian—“Jaffna” goes by many names.
  • Arabic: “جافنا”
  • Arabic: “جفنا (سريلانكا)”
  • Arabic: “جفنا”
  • Asturian: “Jaffna”
  • Belarusian: “Джафна”
  • Bengali: “জাফনা”
  • Breton: “Jaffna”
  • Catalan: “Jaffna”
  • Chinese: “賈夫納”
  • Chinese: “贾夫纳”
  • Czech: “Jaffna”
  • Czech: “Jápané”
  • Danish: “Jaffna”
  • Dutch: “Jaffna”
  • Dutch: “Jaffnapatnam”
  • Egyptian Arabic: “جافنا”
  • Esperanto: “Ĝafna”
  • Estonian: “Jaffna”
  • Finnish: “Jaffna”
  • French: “Jaffna”
  • Georgian: “ჯაფნა”
  • German: “Jaffna”
  • Greek: “Τζάφνα”
  • Gujarati: “જાફના”
  • Hausa: “Jaffna”
  • Hebrew: “ג’אפנה”
  • Hebrew: “ג’פנה”
  • Hindi: “जाफना”
  • Hungarian: “Jaffna”
  • Indonesian: “Jaffna”
  • Irish: “Jaffna”
  • Italian: “Jaffna”
  • Japanese: “ジャフナ”
  • Kannada: “ಜಾಫ್ನ”
  • Kannada: “ಜಾಫ್ನಾ”
  • Kannada: “ಯಾೞ್ಪ್ಪಾಣಂ”
  • Korean: “자프나”
  • Latvian: “Džafna”
  • Lithuanian: “Džafna”
  • Malay: “Jaffna”
  • Malayalam: “ജാഫ്ന”
  • Marathi: “जाफना”
  • Mazanderani: “جفنا”
  • Mingrelian: “ჯაფნა”
  • Nepali: “जाफना”
  • Norwegian Bokmål: “Jaffna”
  • Norwegian Nynorsk: “Jaffna”
  • Norwegian: “Jaffna”
  • Occitan (post 1500): “Jaffna”
  • Panjabi: “ਜਾਫਨਾ”
  • Persian: “جافنا”
  • Polish: “Dżafna”
  • Polish: “Jaffna”
  • Portuguese: “Jafanapatão”
  • Portuguese: “Jaffna”
  • Portuguese: “Jaffnapatam”
  • Portuguese: “Yazhpanam”
  • Russian: “Джафна”
  • Santali: “ᱡᱟᱯᱷᱱᱟ”
  • Scots: “Jaffna”
  • Serbo-Croatian: “Džafna”
  • Serbo-Croatian: “Jaffna”
  • Silesian: “Dżafna”
  • Sindhi: “جافنا”
  • Sinhala: “යාපනය”
  • Sinhala: “යාපනේ”
  • Spanish: “Jaffna”
  • Swedish: “Jaffna”
  • Tamil: “யாழ்ப்பாண நகரம்”
  • Tamil: “யாழ்ப்பாணம்”
  • Telugu: “జాఫ్నా”
  • Thai: “จาฟฟ์นา”
  • Thai: “แจฟฟ์นา”
  • Turkish: “Jaffna”
  • Ukrainian: “Джафна”
  • Urdu: “جافنا”
  • Urdu: “جففنا”
  • Uzbek: “Jafna”
  • Uzbek: “Vapanaya”
  • Uzbek: “Yapanaya”
  • Veps: “Džafn”
  • Vietnamese: “Jaffna”
  • Waray (Philippines): “Jaffna”
  • Western Armenian: “Ժաֆնա”

Places with the Same Name

Discover other places named “Jaffna”.

Localities in the Area

Explore places such as Gurunagar and Navanthurai.

Northern Province: Must-Visit Destinations

Delve into Mannar and Kilinochchi.

Explore These Curated Destinations

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About Mapcarta. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors and available under the Open Database License". Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, except for photos, directions, and the map. Description text is based on the Wikivoyage page “Jaffna”. Photo: Gane Kumaraswamy, CC BY-SA 2.0.