Macau & Guangzhou: Repurposed Historical Sites in Macau

     Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the next segment on my trip through Macau and Guanzhou.  In this part, I’ll still be talking about Macau, but it’ll focus on two historical sites in the city that have been repurposed for modern use: the Ruins of St. Paul’s and Mount Fortress.

     The Ruins of St. Paul’s (shown left) was a Catholic cathedral until it burned down in the mid-1800s.  The only thing left standing was the front façade of the building.  For over a century it stood there until the 1990’s, when plans commenced to excavate and restore the ruins as a historical monument.  In order to stabilize the remaining façade of St. Paul’s, steel and concrete reinforcement was used to buttress the wall (shown below).

The museum itself is built upon the existing layout of the old cathedral that had been excavated.  In fact, during the excavations archeologists unearthed a plethora of artifacts.  In order to protect these artifacts, they were left at the site while glass cases were installed above them (shown below) so visitors could observe the artifacts as they were originally found. [1]

Personally, I think this is a great style of adaptive reuse of historical structures.  The new construction is well-integrated into the existing site and amplifies the historical importance of the ruins.

     The other historical site is Mount Fortress (schematic drawing shown right).  Mount Fortress was a military installation built by the Portuguese and remained active until 1966, when it was then decommissioned and redeveloped as an observatory.  Thirty years later, the observatory was repurposed into the Macao Museum (shown below). [1]

While the observatory was renovated, much of the surrounding area was left untouched in order to preserve the fort’s history.  Some of the sights at the fort that remain are the corner towers and cannons (shown below)

While I do appreciate leaving the military items relatively untouched, I don’t like what was done with the museum.  I know that it was repurposed from the existing observatory, but I doubt that the observatory was repurposed from an existing structure.  I would have liked to have seen a central building on top of Mount Fortress, like a barracks or command post, which was then renovated into the observatory if one existed there beforehand.  If not, then I would have liked it if the observatory was built in a style similar the buildings that were built at around the same time as the fort was.

     So that’s it for Macau.  Overall, I really enjoyed observing both the old and new almost side by side.  And no, I did not gamble away any of my money.  The only complaint I have is that there is so much light pollution in Macau from all of the lit-up billboards, especially the one right outside my hotel window.  That aside, I’d recommend visiting this place for at least the history. Anyways, the next blog will be on the trip to Guangzhou where we passed through a couple of towns in the Kai Ping area, so that should be up soon.  Until then, thanks for reading and I hope to see you back again.

Source:

1.  Leisure and Cultural Services Department of Hong Kong. “Study of Heritage Conservation in Macau.” Retrieved August 11, 2014. http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/ce/Museum/Monument/en/teachingkit/download/teaching_kit_10.pdf