Historic Centre of Macao (Ruins of St. Paul's)

The story

Portuguese ships reached the Pearl River in the 1510s, and in the 1550s Ming officials let them settle on this small peninsula. Macau became the hinge of a trade between China, Japan, India and Europe, and the door through which Jesuit missionaries entered China. Matteo Ricci landed here in 1582 to learn Chinese before going inland. For three centuries Portuguese and Chinese lived side by side, under two sets of laws.

The city that remains is small enough to walk in a day: twenty-two buildings and eight squares listed together as a World Heritage Site in 2005, from the Chinese temple where the city got its name to the oldest Western-style lighthouse on the China coast. Macau returned to China in 1999 as a special administrative region, and Portuguese is still an official language: the street signs are in both.

What is here

The Historic Centre is a walking route, not a gated site: squares, churches and temples are free; only the Macao Museum on Monte Fort charges a small fee.

If you have one minute

At the foot of the steps of St Paul's

The facade was the front of the Church of the Mother of God, built by the Jesuits between 1602 and 1640, partly by Japanese Christians who had fled persecution. Look at its carving: the Virgin, saints and Jesuits, but also a Chinese lion, chrysanthemums, a Portuguese ship, and a dragon-like hydra trampled by the Virgin, with inscriptions in Chinese characters.

In January 1835 a fire destroyed the church and its college, the first Western-style university in East Asia. Only this wall and the steps survived. Walk up and through the doorways: behind is open sky and, below it, a small museum and a crypt with the bones of martyrs.

Things people often get wrong

"It is a cathedral." It was a Jesuit church; Macau's cathedral is a different building a few streets away.

"Macau is only casinos." The casinos are mostly on the reclaimed land and on Cotai; the old city is a different world, and almost all of it is free to visit.

People who stood here

We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then Portuguese and English ones.

• Matteo Ricci (Jesuit, 1552–1610)He arrived in Macau in 1582 and began learning Chinese here; later, in Beijing, he became the best-known European in China.
• Tang Xianzu (playwright, 1550–1616)The author of "The Peony Pavilion" passed through Macau in 1591 and wrote poems on the foreign merchants he saw.
• Lin Zexu (official, 1785–1850)In September 1839, during his campaign against opium, he inspected Macau; a museum on the site where he was received tells the story.
• Robert Morrison (missionary, 1782–1834)The first Protestant missionary in China translated the Bible and wrote the first Chinese–English dictionary; he is buried in the Protestant Cemetery here.
• George Chinnery (painter, 1774–1852)He lived in Macau for 27 years, drew the ruins of St Paul's days after the fire of 1835, and is buried in the same cemetery.
• Zheng Guanying (reformer, 1842–1922)In his family's mansion, the Mandarin's House, he wrote "Words of Warning in Times of Prosperity", a book read by the young Mao Zedong and Sun Yat-sen.

Go deeper: six stops from A-Ma Temple to St Paul's7 stops · about 1 min to read

A walking day from south to north, following the tourist office's heritage route; everything is within a few kilometres.

1. A-Ma Temple

The oldest temple in Macau, built against the hillside at the harbour mouth, honours Mazu, goddess of seafarers. When the Portuguese asked what this place was called, the story goes, they heard "Ma-Gao", the bay of A-Ma, and so the city became Macau.

2. The Mandarin's House

A Chinese mansion of over sixty rooms round courtyards, with some Western touches in its windows and ceilings. It belonged to the family of Zheng Guanying.

3. Senado Square

The heart of the old city, paved in black and white Portuguese wave mosaic, with the Leal Senado building and the Holy House of Mercy, a charity founded in 1569. At New Year and Christmas it is decorated for both.

4. The Ruins of St Paul's

Climb the 68 steps. Behind the facade, look into the crypt and the Museum of Sacred Art, with paintings of the Japanese martyrs of Nagasaki. Next to it is the small Na Tcha Temple, Chinese and Catholic side by side.

5. Monte Fort

The Jesuits' fortress above the church, finished in 1626. In 1622 its cannon helped beat off a Dutch attack, the only battle Macau ever fought for its life. The Macao Museum inside tells the city's story.

6. Guia Fortress and lighthouse

On the highest hill, a small fort with a chapel and the lighthouse of 1865, the first Western-style lighthouse on the coast of China. Typhoon signals are still raised on its mast.

The city and the same years elsewhere

The Jesuits began their church in 1602; in the same year the Dutch East India Company was founded, the company whose ships would attack Macau twenty years later.