Sri Lanka across every century: ancient and Kandyan, colonial Ceylon, independence, and after. Maps that dreamed the island before Europe could find it, photographs from the first Colombo studios, documents and autographs of the people who shaped it, and the books written in its light.
A Venetian copperplate map of an island Europe argued over for two thousand years: Taprobana, the dream-version of Sri Lanka, engraved by Girolamo Porro for Porcacchi's island atlas, c.1590.
A Scowen & Co. albumen view of the terraced steps to the Sacred Bo Tree at Anuradhapura — the oldest human-planted tree on earth with a recorded planting date.
Scowen & Co.'s albumen view of Thuparama — the first stupa built in Sri Lanka — ringed by the leaning pillars of its ancient relic-house and a lost Temple of the Tooth.
Clarke's Sri Lankan essays in the 1979 Pan paperback, inscribed by him at Colombo in 1980 to a 'Professor Shoenberg' — most likely the Cambridge physicist David Shoenberg.