Beyond the baccarat tables: Macao’s rich Portuguese history is still visible today

Lilau Sq. appears to be like heat and languid within the fading daylight.

Like every Portuguese plaza, time strikes slowly right here. Locals chat over espresso beside a kiosk. Travellers take photographs beside whitewashed buildings. A pair pauses to admire the ‘calçada’, the sleek, swirling tiles discovered wherever the Portuguese left a footprint.  

If it weren’t for the 200-year-old banyan tree and melodic rise and fall of Cantonese within the air, you would possibly mistake this nook of Macao for a quiet Lisbon neighbourhood.  

I look at a fountain spurting water right into a shallow pool and consider an previous saying about this place: anybody who drinks its water will sometime return to Macao.

I’m undecided I’ve knowingly had the water from the fountain, however that is my sixth journey to town, every just a little longer than the final. Each time, I discover myself drawn again into the extraordinary cultural tapestry, uncovering one thing new about Macao’s Portuguese previous and falling for it another time.

There could also be one thing to that legend in any case.

Macao is greater than only a gaming capital

Point out Macao, and most of the people consider casinos. Honest or not, town has earned its popularity as a playing powerhouse.

In 2024, it raked in almost €25 billion in playing income – virtually solely from baccarat, the cardboard recreation of alternative for mainland Chinese language bettors.

However lengthy earlier than it grew to become Asia’s on line casino capital, Macao was an important outpost in Portugal’s world empire.

Lured by its strategic location within the Pearl River Delta, the Portuguese arrived within the sixteenth century and the colony quickly grew to become a key buying and selling hub.

Macao’s fortunes ebbed and flowed over the centuries. By the Nineteen Nineties, it had change into a metropolis of vice dominated by Dr. Stanley Ho – ‘the godfather of playing’ – and his on line casino monopoly.

After greater than 400 years of colonial rule, Portugal handed Macao over to China in 1999. Beijing wasted no time reshaping town. They even reclaimed land to merge two islands – Taipa and Coloane – creating the Cotai Strip, now residence to extravagant casino-resorts.

The once-impoverished enclave quickly reworked into one of many world’s wealthiest.

Echoes of Portugal resonate in previous Macao

On an ideal January morning, a tender solar shining in a brilliant blue sky, I meet Mariana César de Sá for a strolling tour of Macao’s UNESCO-listed historic centre.

Born and raised in Macao, César de Sá publishes ‘Macao Information’, town’s main English-language information and way of life supply. She takes satisfaction in displaying guests town past its cavernous casino-resorts.

We meet behind Macao’s most well-known landmark, the Ruins of St. Paul’s. Solely the stone facade stays of this Seventeenth-century Catholic church, destroyed by a hearth centuries earlier.

Earlier than braving the vacationer throngs gathered in entrance of the cathedral body, which lords over previous Macao like a gateway to the previous, we slip right into a neighbourhood past the previous metropolis partitions – the Pátio do Espinho. As soon as a settlement for the exiled Japanese Christians who constructed the church, in the present day it’s a sleepy enclave of single-storey houses.

“I prefer to take guests right here first. It’s filled with historical past but additionally a style of actual life,” de Sá tells me.

It’s additionally a reminder of how far the Portuguese ventured throughout the Age of Discovery – how their customs, structure and faith took root in probably the most distant corners of the world.

Stroll by way of historical past to see the most effective of Macao

From the ruins, we wander by way of the Travessa da Paixão, ‘ardour road’ – a cobblestoned alley lined with pastel-hued colonial buildings that has change into a magnet for wedding ceremony photographs – and stroll slowly by way of slim alleys to Senado Sq..

Once we attain the sq., town’s calçada-paved civic coronary heart because the sixteenth century, de Sá gestures towards a hulking white constructing: the Municipal Affairs Bureau. 

“It was the unique metropolis corridor from the 18th century – and it’s nonetheless that in the present day – however most individuals don’t realise you possibly can go into it,” she says, stepping inside a peaceable Portuguese courtyard lined with azulejos (blue and white ceramic tiles) depicting scenes from Macao’s historical past.

The entire historic centre is stuffed with secret areas and centuries-old buildings that proceed to operate in the present day. The canary-yellow St. Lawrence Church constructed by Jesuits nonetheless holds companies. The coral-coloured Macau Navy Membership, as soon as just for navy males, now welcomes company into its wonderful Portuguese restaurant.

Some, just like the Nineteenth-century Dom Pedro V Theatre, maintain particular which means past historical past.

“It immediately transports me to Portugal,” says Sara Santos Silva, an expat from Porto who has lived in Macao for 10 years.

“Throughout my early days in Macao, once I was blown away by the sensory overload of dwelling in Asia, it felt good to search out myself in acquainted environment: impeccable cobblestone, a kiosk identical to those you’ll discover in Lisbon, and the pale inexperienced facade of the theatre.”

Even the Fifteenth-century A-Ma Temple, a shrine devoted to the Chinese language sea goddess Mazu, holds surprising significance in the present day. When Portuguese settlers arrived centuries in the past, they misinterpreted the temple’s identify – ‘A-ma-gok’ – because the identify of the land itself.

Macao’s Portuguese historical past is a legacy finest tasted

Possibly nothing speaks to this distinctive heritage like Macao’s meals.

From tranquil Coloane and residential Taipa to the historic centre, decades-old eating places serve Portuguese classics like ‘bacalhau à brás’ (salted cod blended with onions, chopped fried potatoes and egg), grilled sardines, and baked duck rice.

“There’s no scarcity of choices. I do know the place to show to for a better-than-decent ‘francesinha’ (Porto’s hefty sandwich), a correct ‘prego’ (steak sandwich) and a monkfish rice that immediately hits residence,” says Silva. “This isn’t a one-stop-shop, although.”

Within the picturesque St. Lazarus district, one restaurant group is proving that true. 

Chaves-born brothers Pedro and Mauro Almeida, together with their enterprise companion Ricardo and Hong Kong-born founder Asai, have turned a number of previous buildings into landmarks for Portuguese meals and wine. Their most well-known undertaking, Albergue 1601, serves grilled octopus, seafood rice stew and grilled Ibérico pork in a historic yellow home surrounded by centuries-old camphor bushes.

However one in every of their latest ventures gives a extra fashionable interpretation of Portugal.

Meals is writing the subsequent chapter in Macao’s Portuguese story

I meet Pedro, Ricardo and Asai at 3 Sardines on a quiet weeknight. As we eat ‘petiscos’ – Portugal’s reply to tapas – like ‘pica-pau’ (beef cubes with pickles) and fried peppers, I take within the journal clippings on the wall and fish traps hung from the ceiling. Once I run my fingers over the tender purple cushions I’m sitting on, Ricardo reads my thoughts.

“These are actual govt seats from TAP planes from the Nineteen Fifties,” he tells me. “All the things you see is a classic merchandise hand-picked from Portugal.”

Asai fell in love with Portuguese tradition – particularly its delicacies – after shifting to Macao and made it his mission to revitalise its presence within the metropolis. Right now, the group runs 4 eating places, a workshop house, and a pastry store – all loving tributes to Portugal.

These tasks haven’t solely introduced new power to the beforehand ignored St. Lazarus district: they’ve complemented its timeless establishments and little quirks of life that maintain a 400-year-old connection alive.

“Most guests are stunned by how current that heritage is in Macao,” Silva tells me.  

“The road names are in Portuguese. Locals nonetheless throw a Portuguese phrase or two into every day dialog. All this doesn’t simply immerse travellers within the heritage but additionally provides Portuguese residents a way of belonging that’s truthfully very laborious to match.”