Place · Portuguese Baroque church · India
St Paul's Church, Diu
The 1601-1610 Portuguese Baroque Church of St Paul in the historic town of Diu, built by the Jesuits as the mother church of the Portuguese Diu possession — one of the earliest surviving Baroque churches in Asia and the architectural template for the subsequent Portuguese Baroque church-building in Old Goa, Macau, and the Philippines. The pine-wood and gilt altar (1636), the painted ceiling, and the surviving 17th-century choir loft make St Paul's Diu one of the three best-preserved Portuguese religious buildings in India (with the Basilica of Bom Jesus at Old Goa and St Francis at Kochi). The 1961 Indian annexation preserved Catholic worship. The church is still active with Sunday mass.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.715, 70.987
Connections (1)
- Imperial administration ofOld Goa
Diu, Daman and Goa were the last Portuguese possessions in India, held until the Indian army took them in December 1961 — four hundred and fifty years after Albuquerque and fourteen years after the British left. Diu's fort and St Paul's church survive almost intact because the place stopped being commercially important early and nobody had reason to rebuild over it.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “St. Paul's Church”. Charles Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire; the Historical Archives of Goa; UNESCO’s Churches and Convents of Goa file.
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