Macau is located on China’s Southeast coast bordering the Guangdong Province in China. It is about 60 kilometers from Hong Kong. The region is only 28 square kilometers large and is comprised of the Macau Peninsula and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. Macau was a colony of Portugal for 442 years and today retains many cultural, architectural and culinary influences from the Portuguese rule. Macau was handed back to the Chinese in 1999 and is today a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. An estimated 490,000 people reside in Macau today and the population is 95% ethnic Chinese with the majority of the remaining 5% being Portuguese.
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Ruins of St. Paul’s / Rua de S. Paulo
All that remains of the greatest of Macau’s chruches is its magnificent stone façade and grand staircase. The church was built in 1602 adjoining the Jesuit College of St. Paul’s, the first Western college in the Far East where missionarie such as Matteo Ricci and dam Schall studied Chinese before serving at the Ming Court in Peking as astronomers and mathematicians. The church, made of taipa and wood, was brilliantly decorated and fiurnished, according to early travellers. The façade of carved stone was built 1620-27 by Japanese Christian exiles and local craftsmen under the direction of Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola. After the expulsion of the Jesuits, the college was used as an army barracks and in 1835 a fire started in the kitchens and destroyed the college and the body of the church. The surviving façade rised in 4 colonnaded tiers, and is covered with carvings and statues which eloquently illustrate the early days of the Church in Asia. There are statues of the Virgin and saints, symbols of the Garden of Eden and the Crucifixion, angels and the devil, a Chinese dragon and a Japanese chrysanthemum, a Portuguese sailing ship and pious warning inscribed in Chinese.
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The recovery of the area and museology work carried out in St. Paul Ruins could not be complete without the organization of sacred and museum type spaces, which work as reminders of the rich history of the conversion of the Far East to Christianity, a movement originated in Macau in the now disappeared Mater Dei College.
Visitors may go in and observe the crypt walking through the upper balustrade or through the lower sidewalk. In either case, a silent and respectful attitude is requested of those who are inside of a sacred place. As a proof of the religious nature of this space, an altar carved on a sole marble block as well as a cross and tabemacle enrooted in the rock can be observed.
When leaving the quiet atmosphere of the inner area of the crypt, visitors will move into the singular adjacent room where a Sacred Art Museum has been organized.
Before leaving the Museum and continuing to visit the area of the ancient vaults of the church, visitors should take some time to contemplate of the most exquisite works of jewellery of the Territory, which is placed in the centre of the room : The Support of Our Lady of Remedies, in silver, a magnificent work of art of rococo and neo-classical influence of the first quarter of the 19th century.
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Largo do Senado
