Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral

At the end of Rua de São Paulo today, only a single façade and 66 stone steps remain of what was once the biggest Catholic Church in East Asia. And, of course, the crypts of its founding Jesuits.

Built in 1580 atop one of Macau's seven hills, the Cathedral of St. Paul suffered two major fires, in 1595 and 1601 respectively, leading to the massive reconstruction effort that began in 1602 and took 35 years to complete.

In its heyday, St. Paul's Cathedral was the recipient of major gifts from European royalty, claiming three beautifully decorated halls and a vaulted roof, courtesy of the Roman legacy.

However, the church finally succumbed to fire during a strong typhoon that hit Macau in 1835, leaving the greatest church in Macau, save the southern façade, decimated. The Ruins of St. Paul's were later restored in the 1990's.

The architecture of this church, dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle of Jesus, must have been quite grand in its heyday. Indeed, even today, with a lone surviving wall, the Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral are quite a sight to behold. The carved granite façade consists of five tiers:

• the first tier comprises ten columns in the Ionic style, with the phrase "MATER DEI" ("Mother of God") carved over the center entrance;
• the second comprises the statues of four saints enshrined in their respective altars between ten Corinthian-style columns;
• a shrine on the third tier centers a bronze statue of Mary;
• the shrine on the fourth tier holds a bronze of Jesus Christ; and
  
• the fifth tier consists of a bas-relief of a dove with its wings outstretched. (Local folklore has it that the eye of the dove once contained a brilliant sapphire that so incited greed that more than a few locals had been seriously hurt, or even dying, climbing the church's south wall seeking it).

An assortment of bas-reliefs, or low-relief carvings, adorn the last remaining wall of St. Paul's, including European symbols such as of those of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and that of a sailing ship - neither wholly unexpected of a Catholic church of the day - much like the cross standing at the coping of the wall. But what is so distinctive about the carvings at St. Paul's is the seemingly seamless fusion between the apparently incongruous symbols of the European, the Christian, and the Chinese. For example, the façade holds bas-reliefs of the chrysanthemum and the cherry - blatantly Chinese symbols - as well as Chinese inscriptions. Not to mention the very Chinese-inspired stone lions sitting on the third and fourth tiers. Oddly enough, there's also an etching of Madonna (a Christian symbol) stomping on a multi-headed dragon (a Chinese-inspired demon). With the blatant intertwining such of disparate symbols, the Church itself becomes the most significant symbol of acceptance and harmony.

Surveying the elegance of the surviving façade, it's not hard to imagine why St. Paul's is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. After all, the Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral is a prime example of "a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history." The wall is a lasting symbol of the joining of two cultures which began so long ago with Portuguese imperialists, and has grown to represent the symbiosis of cultures that endures in Macau to this day.