Historic Centre of Macao

Prologue: Incense and Sails

At dawn, incense rose before the A-Ma Temple, and a sailor offered a prayer to the statue of the goddess before boarding his ship. The stone steps had been worn smooth by more than four hundred years of footsteps.

He could not have imagined that the little temple behind him would lend its name to a city — and that the city would become the place where East and West first truly stood face to face.

The Name of A-Ma

In 1553, the Portuguese landed in Macao on the pretext of drying their cargo, and later gained permission to reside. Macao’s name comes from the A-Ma Temple — the Portuguese transliteration of “A-Ma Kok,” “the cove of A-Ma.”

Before the Portuguese ever arrived, the A-Ma Temple had already kept the incense of voyagers. Sailors lit a stick of incense before setting out to sea and returned with a vow fulfilled; the sea wind scattered the smoke — and also blew the name “A-Ma” into the logbooks of Portuguese navigators.

The Bell Tower of St. Paul’s

From 1602, the Jesuits built the Church of St. Paul, spending nearly four decades carrying Western architecture and faith eastward.

Beneath the church’s bell tower lay East Asia’s earliest and most enduring experiment in globalisation: around the fountain of Senado Square, the Church of St. Dominic, the Holy House of Mercy and the Leal Senado Building stand shoulder to shoulder with Chinese temples, pawnshops and arcaded shophouses; local students in uniform walk on the Portuguese calçada pavement, and a Portuguese egg-tart shop sits beside the A-Ma Temple. For four centuries Macao was at once a Catholic holy city and a Sino-Western trading port — two civilisations shaking hands at the corner of a single street.

After the Great Fire

In 1835, the Church of St. Paul was reduced to ashes in a great fire; only its front wall survived.

That scorched remnant of a wall was what Macao came to call the Ruins of St. Paul’s — the city’s most famous symbol. The fire consumed the church but could not consume the memory: the surviving facade stands like a monument at the foot of the Fortaleza do Monte, remembering for a whole city the brightest bells it ever rang.

Return and World Heritage

In 1887, the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Friendship and Commerce was signed, and Macao entered its treaty period; in 1999, Macao returned to China, becoming a Special Administrative Region under “one country, two systems.”

In 2005, the Historic Centre of Macao was inscribed on the World Heritage List under criteria (ii)(iii)(iv)(vi) — the most complete historic centre in China where Western architecture and Chinese traditional dwellings coexist. The silhouette of the Ruins of St. Paul’s, the incense of the A-Ma Temple and the fountain before Senado Square continue to bear witness to the daily life of this “interchange of Eastern and Western civilisations.”

Epilogue: Incense Before the Ruined Wall

At dawn, the incense of the A-Ma Temple rose once more.

More than four hundred years on, sails have given way to ferries, yet the stone steps still wait for the same sea winds. The bells beneath the ruined wall have fallen silent; the incense before the goddess has never gone out — the city’s longest story is hidden in that thread of blue smoke.

Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)

• Criterion (ii): Macao was a hub of modern East–West trade, religion and architectural exchange.
• Criterion (iii): The historic centre bears witness to the spread of Catholicism in China and to four centuries of Sino-Western coexistence.
• Criterion (iv): The eclectic buildings and street pattern form an outstanding example of a maritime trading city.
• Criterion (vi): Macao is directly associated with major events in modern Sino-Western cultural encounter.

Facts at a Glance

• The historic centre covers about 1.4 km², containing more than 20 historic buildings and squares
• Inscribed in 2005 as the most complete historic centre of Sino-Western blend in China