Trincomalee, ancient Gokanna, town and port, Sri Lanka, on the north-eastern coast of the island. It is situated on a peninsula in Trincomalee Bay, formerly called Koddiyar Bay (meaning “Fort by the River”), one of the best natural harbors in the world.

Trincomalee was, in early times, an important settlement of Indo-Aryan immigrants. The Thousand Columns Temple (also called the Koneswaram Temple), located at the tip of the peninsula, came into use as a Hindu temple sometime in the 7th century or earlier. The first Europeans to occupy the city were the Portuguese in the 17th century; they razed the temple, using its stone to build a fort. The harbor repeatedly changed hands between the Dutch, French, and British until the British gained lasting possession of it in 1795. Trincomalee’s importance as a major British base increased after the Japanese expelled the British from Singapore in the Second World War; the Japanese bombed the city in 1942. 

The port of Trincomalee is no longer commercially important, although in the 1960s, congestion and labor problems in Colombo, the commercial capital and main port of Sri Lanka, caused some trade to pass through it. The city is a railway terminus and has good road links to the rest of Sri Lanka.