Batticaloa (Tamil: மட்டக்களப்பு, Maṭṭakkaḷappu; Sinhala: මඩකලපුව, Maḍakalapuwa) is a major city in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, and its former capital.

Pasikudah is a popular tourist destination situated 35 km (22 mi) northwest with beaches and flat year-round warm-water shallow-lagoons.

This bridge is also famous for Singing fishes which were considered as musical sounds heard in the Kallady lagoon on a full moon day.

Pasikudah is a bay protected from the ocean, with a flat and sandy bed extending 150–200 m (490–660 ft) meters from the shore.

Mattakallappu Manmiyam refers (மட்டக்களப்பு மான்மியம்) Mukkuva or Mutkuhar are known as the first people migrated to this land and constructed seven villages in various areas.

Gajabahu, Parakramabahu, Vijayabahu were some of these Suryawamsa kings who employed the Chera soldiers for their protection and defence of Sri Lanka.

His invasion marks the final – cataclysmic – destruction of the kingdom of Rajarata, which had for so long been the heart of native power on the island.

Native power was henceforth centred on a kaleidoscopically shifting collection of kingdoms in south and central Sri Lanka.

With the decline of the Rohana sub-kingdom and the defeat of Polonnaruwa, coming with the rise of Chola power, i.e., from about the 13th century CE, these regions became wild.

The many irrigation works (tanks etc., which exist even today) became home to malaria (see History of Sri Lanka).

Thus seafaring people who had begun to settle down along the coast since the Anuradhapura times, c. 6th Century CE began to flourish.

The forests continued to be dominated by the Veddha population which claimed kingship ("cross-cousins") with the Sinhala kings of Kandy.

In this connection two kings are mentioned, Kalinga Magha and Jaya Bahu, who had been in power forty years, apparently reckoned from the time of the military rule after Sahasa Malla.

In the king's eleventh year (1244/5) Lanka was invaded by Chandrabhanu, a Javanese (Javaka) from Tambralinga, with a host armed with blow-pipes and poisoned arrows: he may have been a sea-robber, and though now repulsed descended on the Island later on.

The rest of the reign according to the contemporary records was spent in pious works; the king also held a convocation for the purpose of reforming the priesthood, whose discipline had been relaxed during the Tamil occupation.

The chronicles make no mention of a great Pandyan invasion which seems to have taken place between 1254 and 1256, in which one of the kings of Lanka was slain and the other rendered tributary.

From Cape Comorin the Dutch Admiral Joris van Spilbergen steered his course to Point de Galle; but, without landing there or at any of the other places which were strongly fortified by the Portuguese, he sailed round the south coast of the Island and made for Batticaloa, where he anchored on 31 May 1602.

He learnt that the town of Batticaloa, where the chief of the province resided, was about three miles (5 km) inland; so he sent him a messenger proposing to enter into trade with him.

It is one of the most picturesque of the small Dutch fort of Sri Lanka, it's situated in an island, still in good condition.

In 1942, during World War II, the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and escorting destroyer HMAS Vampire were stationed at Trincomalee.

The Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL), located in Vantharumoolai 16 km north of Batticaloa, was founded in 1980.

In the 1980s, despite Burger emigration to Australia, the Union still numbered some 2,000 speakers of Sri Lankan Portuguese, making them the largest community still speaking the dialect.

The cult has come with the King Gajabahu I who brought the settler Tamils from the Chera Kingdom of his friend Cheran Senguttuvan.

Hindus believe that by bathing in the sacred waters of the Mamangeshwarar tank, the departed souls of their family will be receiving better attainments in their cycle of its transmigration.

While the Dagaba and shrine in the Dutch Fort is the oldest (1st century CE), Mangalaramaya is a well-known modern Buddhist temple in Batticaloa.

Rice and coconuts are the two staples of the district, and steamers trading round the island call regularly at the port.

Prior to the Sri Lankan civil war, there were large-scale shrimp farms as well as fish and rice processing activities.