A statue of Queen Victoria was originally erected in front of the Passenger Jetty of Colombo Harbor and at the junction of York and Church Streets in 1897. The first monument to Queen Victoria in Ceylon, the marble statue was commissioned and unveiled in celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The statue was commissioned to British portrait sculptor George Edward Wade. It was one of the only statues of Queen Victoria to be sculpted by him.
The statue was at its original location until mid-1920s and then it was moved to Gordon Gardens adjacent to the Queen's House. The statue moved from Gordon Gardens to Victoria Park and then to the Colombo Museum site in 2006. The statue was given a facelift ahead of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in 2013 and was reinstalled facing Green Path.
The statue was removed and reinstalled at Queen Victoria Dam as part of the plan to make the surrounding area of the dam a tourist attraction.
<blockquote>If anything were to compensate a people for the loss of their national independence, it is to be governed by such a sovereign as Queen Victoria. Every one of us now and in the future may look upon her face and say that this has been the greatest and best Queen that we have ever known.</blockquote> - Tamil Representative P. Coomaraswamy, addressing the Legislative Council, 1897.
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated in 1897 and many celebrations were held all over the colonies of the British Empire. The Ceylon Legislative Council, which met on June 22, 1897, passed a resolution stating that a statue of the Queen be erected on the island at the cost of the public revenue, and as a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the throne. This resolution was proposed by the Governor of British Ceylon and seconded by P. Coomaraswamy, the Tamil representative and it was taken as carried unanimously.