About Ruins of St. Paul's
Only the front is left, and it's enough. The church the Jesuits raised in the early 17th century, one of the largest Catholic churches in Asia at the time, burned during a typhoon in 1835. The facade stayed standing on its own, silhouetted against the sky at the top of a 68-step staircase, and today it is propped up from behind by a concrete and steel structure.
Get close and read the stone: there is a Virgin stepping on a seven-headed hydra, with an inscription in Chinese, and Chinese guardian lions carved at the base, probably by the hands of Japanese artisans converted by the Jesuits. Behind the facade, a small museum and the crypt show the foundations excavated in the 1990s. Right next to the ruins stands Na Tcha Temple, from 1888, which sums up Macau in just a few meters.
