Ceylon Tea Museum

The Ceylon Tea Museum, located in Kandy, showcases Sri Lanka’s tea history in a restored 1925 factory, featuring antique machinery and exhibits on tea pioneers.

Planning your visit

Ceylon tea exists because of a plant disease. Coffee rust destroyed Sri Lanka's coffee industry in the 1870s, and the planters — many of them Scottish — replanted with tea, which within decades made the island one of the world's principal producers.

The museum occupies the Hantane tea factory of 1925 outside Kandy, restored after being abandoned, and it holds the original machinery: rollers, driers, sifters and the Marshall and Davidson equipment that processed leaf for a century, some of it still operable.

The exhibits cover the pioneers, particularly James Taylor, who planted the first commercial estate, and Thomas Lipton, who bought Ceylon estates and built a global brand on them.

The upper floor gives views across the hills, and tea is served.

Kandy is the hill capital, and the tea country proper — Nuwara Eliya, Ella, Haputale — lies beyond it.

Bookable options include tours combining the museum with Kandy temples. Current availability is listed below.