The town of Macau was born down in the south
of the peninsula, around the bay-front road
known as the
Praia Grande , and grew
out from there. Unfortunately, these days a
stroll on the seafront is not what it was,
with the bay now being enclosed and
reclamation work underway. More rewarding is
the main road that cuts the Praia from east
to west, called
Avenida do Infante
d'Henrique to the east and
Avenida de
Almeida Ribeiro to the west. At the
eastern end of the road rises the
extraordinarily garish
Lisboa Hotel,
though most of the interest lies in the
section west of the Praia, particularly in
the beautiful
Largo do Senado (Senate
Square), which marks the downtown area and
bears the unmistakeable influence of
southern Europe, not only in its
architecture, but also in its role as a
place for people to stroll, sit and chat in
the open air.
At the northern end of Largo do Senado,
away from the main road, is the beautiful
seventeenth-century Baroque church, São
Domingos , while to the south, facing
the square from across the main road, stands
the Leal Senado (Mon-Sat 1-7pm;
free), generally considered the finest
Portuguese building in the city. Step into
the interior courtyard here to see wonderful
blue and white Portuguese tiles around the
walls, while up the staircase from the
courtyard, you reach first a formal garden
and then the richly decorated senate
chamber itself. In the late sixteenth
century this hall used to be packed out with
the entire citizenry of the colony, who
gathered to debate issues of importance. The
senate's title leal (loyal) was
earned during the period when Spain occupied
the Portuguese throne and Macau became the
final stronghold of loyalists to the true
king. Today the senate chamber is still used
by the municipal government of Macau, though
it's hardly the democratic chamber of old.
Adjacent to the chamber is the wood-carved public
library , whose collection includes a
repository of many fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century books which you can still
see on the shelves; you're free to go in and
browse.
A couple of hundred metres west from
Largo do Senado, Almeida Ribeiro emerges
onto the so-called Inner Harbour ,
which overlooks, and is sheltered by, the
mainland just across the water. Ferries to
Guangzhou still use this harbour, and it
used also to be the location of the Floating
Casino , an ugly wooden contraption on
the water teeming with gamblers at all
hours. (A few months before Macau's handover
this was moved to a site near the Jetfoil
Terminal, for unspecified "security
reasons".) Some of the streets
immediately inland from here, especially
those just north of Almeida Ribeiro, are
worth poking around. Streets such as Rua
Felicidade, parallel with Almeida Ribeiro,
have shaken off their former seediness and
are now full of friendly restaurants and
small hotels. South from the Guangshou Ferry
Pier the seafront road, Rua das Lorchas, is
lined by old arcades and characterful shops.
GAMBLING
The ten official Macau
casinos (of
which nine are open to the general
public), although numerous and always
packed, have none of the glamour of
casinos in places such as Las Vegas or
Monte Carlo. You are free to enter any
casino at any time of the day or night,
dressed in any attire, with the only
restriction being that you should be
eighteen years of age, and your cameras
should be deposited at the entrance. Once
inside, another restriction you should
note is that there is a
minimum bet
on many games, varying between 10 and
100ptca.
The four-storey casino in the Hotel
Lisboa is the largest and probably the
most interesting for a visit. For
information on how to play the various
games, ask MTIB for a leaflet. Be warned,
however: signs in tiny print at the
entrances to the casinos politely suggest
that punters should engage in betting for
fun only, and not as a means of making
money. Revenues from the gambling trade in
Macau are thought to approach half a
billion US dollars annually.
SÃO PAULO
A few hundred metres north of Largo do
Senado is Macau's most famous landmark,
the church of
São Paulo , once
hailed as the greatest Christian monument
in east Asia, but today surviving as no
more than a facade. Constructed at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, it
dominated the city for two hundred years
until its untimely destruction by fire in
1835. Fortuitously, however, the facade,
which had always been considered the
highlight of the building, did not
collapse - richly carved and laden with
statuary, the cracked stone still presents
an imposing sight from the bottom of the
steps leading up from the Rua de São
Paulo. The former crypt and nave have
become a
museum , detailing the
building and design of the church (9am-6pm
daily, except Tues; free).
Immediately east of São Paulo looms
another early seventeenth-century
monument, the Fortaleza do Monte
(Tues-Sun 10am-6pm; 15ptca). Climb up and
take a stroll round the old ramparts for
some great views over the city. It's an
impressive pile, though it was only once
used in a military function, to repel the
Dutch in 1622, when it succeeded in
blowing up the Dutch magazine with a lucky
shot from a cannon ball.
Negotiating the roads a few hundred
metres northwest of São Paulo brings you
to perhaps the nicest part of Macau,
around Praça Luís de Camões
(also accessible on buses #17 from the Hotel
Lisboa and #18 from the Barrier Gate
and Inner Harbour). North, facing the
square, is the Jardim Luís de Camões
, a delightful shady park full of large
trees and popular with locals. The park
was built in honour of the great
sixteenth-century Portuguese poet, Luís
de Camões, who is thought to have been
banished here for part of his life. There
is also a museum, the Museu de Luís de
Camões (daily except Wed 11am-5pm;
1ptca), which is housed in an eighteenth
century villa known as the Fundacao
Oriente (originally called the
"Casa Garden") and has some
attractive historical prints of the
enclave.
Immediately east of the square, though,
is the real gem, the Old Protestant
Cemetery , where all the non-Catholic
traders, visitors, sailors and adventurers
who happened to die in Macau were buried.
The gravestones have all been restored and
are quite legible. In this quiet garden,
under the shade of trees, the last
testaments to these mainly British,
American and German individuals, who died
far from home in the early part of the
last century, make incredibly poignant
reading.
EAST
About 1km northeast of the Fortaleza do
Monte is an area worth walking around
(buses #12 and #22 run up here from the
Hotel
Lisboa along the Avenida do
Conselheiro Ferreira de Almeida). At the
junction with Estrada de Adolfo Loureiro,
the first site you'll reach, screened off
behind a high wall, is the scenic
Jardim
Lou Lim Ioc (daily dawn-dusk; 1ptca),
a formal, Chinese garden full of bamboos,
pavilions, birds in cages and old men
playing mah-jongg. A couple of minutes
around the corner from here you'll find
the
Sun Yatsen Memorial Home (daily
except Tues 10am-5pm; free) at the
junction of Avenida de Sidonia Pais and
the Rua de Silva Mendes. There isn't that
much to see - basically it's an
attractive, rambling old mansion scattered
about with mementoes of Sun Yatsen, who
spent some time living in Macau in the
years before he turned to revolutionary
activities. Drop by to see the
turn-of-the-century interior decor if
nothing else.
The sharp hill to the east of here is
Macau's highest, and its summit is crowned
by the seventeenth-century Guia
Fortress , the dominant feature of
which is a charming whitewashed
lighthouse, added in the last century and
reputed to be the oldest anywhere on the
Chinese coast. You can take a leisurely
hike along a path up to the fort in about
an hour, or at the other end of the Colina
da Guia there's a cable car which
connects to the Flora Garden below. At the
top there are some superb views over the
whole peninsula, including, on a clear
day, a glimpse of Lantau Island far to the
east. There's a tourist information
counter and coffee bar (daily 9am-5.30pm)
up here as well. In the harbour below the
Colina da Guia you'll see the Floating
Casino , a rickety but atmospheric
wooden structure, packed with hard-faced
Chinese gamblers. Nearby is the Tourist
Activity Centre containing the Grand
Prix Museum (daily 10am-6pm; 10ptca)
and the Wine Museum (daily
10am-6pm; 15ptca), which, respectively,
celebrate the history of the Macau Grand
Prix and offer a glimpse into the history
of winemaking - with tastings of course.
To the north, near the Culture Centre,
another feature of the Outer Harbour is
the twenty-metre-high bronze statue of Kun
Iam, the Goddess of Mercy. It stands on a
small artificial island, linked to the
seafront by a short causeway.
NORTH
The northern part of the peninsula up to
the border with China is largely
residential, though it has a couple of
points of interest. It's possible to walk
the 3km from Almeida Ribeiro to the
border, but the streets at this end of
town are not particularly atmospheric, so
it makes sense to resort to the local
buses.
On Avenida do Coronel Mesquita, cutting
the peninsula from east to west about 2km
north of Almeida Ribeiro, is the
enchanting Kun Iam Temple (daily
7am-6pm), accessible on bus #12 from the Hotel
Lisboa. The complex of temples here,
dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy, is
around four hundred years old, but the
most interesting fact associated with the
place is that here, in 1844, the United
States and China signed their first treaty
of trade and co-operation - you can still
see the granite table they signed it on.
Inside the complex, shaded by banyan
trees, are a number of small shrines, with
the main temple hall approached via a
flight of steps. Around the central statue
of Kun Iam herself, to the rear, are a
crowd of statues representing the eighteen
wise men of China, among whom, curiously,
is Marco Polo (on the far left), depicted
with a curly beard and moustache. The
worshippers you'll see here shaking bamboo
sticks in cylinders are trying to find out
their fortunes.
From the Kun Iam Temple you can catch
bus #18 direct to the Portas do Cerco
, or Barrier Gate, the nineteenth-century
stuccoed archway marking the border with
China. These days unfortunately the old
gate itself is redundant - people actually
cross the border through a customs and
immigration complex to one side. This does
at least mean that you can examine the
monument from close quarters as it is no
longer a restricted area. A short walk to
the west of the gate is Sun Yatsen
Memorial Park , which gives
interesting views over Zhuhai in the
People's Republic, immediately across a
small canal. Buses #3 or #10 will get you
back to Almeida Ribeiro and the Hotel
Lisboa from the gate.
SOUTH
The small but hilly tongue of land south
of Almeida Ribeiro is a highly interesting
place to stroll, with colonial mansions
and their gardens looming up round every
corner. The best way to start exploring
this area is to walk up the steep Rua
Central leading south from Almeida Ribeiro
just east of Largo do Senado. After five
minutes you can detour off down a small
road to your right, which contains the
pastel-coloured early nineteenth-century
church of
Santo Agostinho Back
along Rua Central again will lead you to
another attractive church of the same era,
the cream and white
São Lourenço
, standing amid palm trees.
Continuing several hundred metres
farther south you'll reach the seafront on
the southwestern side of the peninsula,
which is known as the Barra district
. As you face the sea, the celebrated A-Ma
Temple is immediately to your right.
Situated underneath Barra Hill overlooking
the Inner Harbour, this temple may be as
old as six hundred years in parts, and
certainly predates the arrival of the
Portuguese on the peninsula. Dedicated to
the goddess A-Ma, whose identity blurs
from Queen of Heaven into Goddess of the
Sea (and who seems to be the same as Tin
Hau in Hong Kong), the temple is an
attractive jumble of altars and little
outhouses among the rocks.
Immediately across the road from here,
on the seafront, stands the twentieth
century's votive offering to the sea, the Maritime
Museum (daily except Tues 10am-5.30pm;
8ptca). This is an excellently presented,
modern museum, covering old explorers,
seafaring techniques, equipment, models
and boats. For an additional charge, you
can even join a boat tour (daily 10.30am,
11.30am, 3.30pm & 4.30pm; 1ptca) on
one of the junks moored just outside the
museum. This gives you a chance to sail
around the Inner Harbour, hearing details
of the lives of local fishermen in
English.
A short walk south along the shore from
the museum brings you to the very tip of
the peninsula, which is today marked by
the Pousada de São Tiago, an
incredible hotel built into the remains of
the seventeenth-century Portuguese
fortress, the Fortaleza de Barra .
Enter the front door and you find yourself
walking up a stone tunnel running with
water - it's well worth climbing up to the
Pousada' s verandah café for a
drink overlooking the sea. Continuing the
walk around the southern headland, and
back to the north again, you'll pass a
beautiful cream colonial-style building
high up on the headland. This used to be
the Bela Vista, the finest hotel in
the territory, but at the handover it was
given to Portugal's representative in
Macau as a residence. The road north from
here up to the Praia Grande, near the Hotel
Lisboa, takes about another ten
minutes on foot. The wonderful pink
building on your left shortly before the Praia
Grande is the nineteenth-century Palácio
do Governo , which unfortunately is
not open to visitors.
