St Antony

St Anthony Church is consider first church built in 1588 and naturally dedicated to this Portuguese saint “colleague” of St. Francis of Assisi.

The surrounding ground it is the most probable place where westerners build their provisional residences, at short distance from their ships anchored.

A timber fence was protecting the encamping area forming a palisade, a common practice inherit from the Roman period.

After the primitive provisional dwellings in tents and straw was started the construction of more solid structures in timber.

The first masonry church was built in 1638 in the same place as the existing one. The powerful 1874 typhoon and aftermath fires and pirates attacks devastated completely this area, that was slowly rebuild.

In 1930 and in the 1950’s the church suffered several remodeling, with the nationalistic spirit of the Estado Novo (New State), reflected in the Shanghai Plaster layers that imitate the use of granite stones.

The original design was flat, colored yellow and white as it is in the Churches of St. Dominic, St Augustine, St. Joseph, Carmo, etc.

Not even the Cathedral could escape to this plastering “camouflage”. During the saint feast day, Jun 13, there is a ceremony related with the symbolic payment to the saint as captain and protector of Macau.

A ancient painting on the rear side altar graphically narrated the life of this Saint Anthony from Lisbon.