St. Augustine's Square

Step into St. Augustine's Square, and you are stepping into what many consider the most elegant corner of Macao's entire Historic Centre. This hilltop square is absolutely surrounded by architectural treasures, and standing here feels like being in a small European plaza that somehow drifted across the ocean and landed softly on the shores of southern China. The Portuguese called this Largo de Santo Agostinho, and it has been a refined gathering place since the sixteenth century. Look around you carefully. Within a few steps in every direction, you have some of the most important cultural buildings in Macao, and each one tells a different chapter of this city's extraordinary story. Directly before you stands St. Augustine's Church, originally founded by Spanish Augustinian friars in 1591. The current structure dates from 1874 and features a stunning baroque interior with a life-sized statue of Christ bearing the cross. Every year during Lent, a remarkable procession carries this statue through the streets, a tradition that has continued unbroken for over four hundred years. To your left, you can see the distinctive green and white facade of the Dom Pedro V Theatre, built in 1860. This was one of the very first Western-style...