Macau held Europe's first foothold in China from 1557 and its last until 1999. Three days of Jesuit ramparts, mandarin courtyard houses, Suzhou gardens and Protestant graves trace how two empires shared 32.9km² of the Pearl River Delta.
Raised by Jesuits 1617–26; its cannon sank the Dutch flagship during the 1622 invasion. Inside, the Macau Museum's three floors trace 400 years of Sino-Portuguese life. Closed Mondays; ramparts open 07:00–19:00.
Largo do Lilau sits above the spring that supplied Macau's first Portuguese settlers — 'who drinks from Lilau never forgets Macau'. Round the corner, the 1874 Moorish Barracks housed Goan police brought in from British India.
The 4,000m² 1869 courtyard compound of reformist thinker Zheng Guanying, whose writings shaped the young Sun Yat-sen. Sixty rooms mix Cantonese timberwork with Portuguese shutters and Indian-influenced mouldings.
The 1758 Baroque church of the seminary that served as Macau's Jesuit university keeps a silver reliquary holding a fragment of St. Francis Xavier's arm bone. Its dome and scrolled façade were copied across South China.
Macau's highest hill carries 1622–38 ramparts, a chapel whose Chinese-influenced frescoes were rediscovered under plaster in 1998, and the 1865 lighthouse — the first Western-style light built on the China coast.
Sun Yat-sen practised medicine in Macau from 1892 before turning revolutionary. This Moorish-revival mansion, rebuilt in 1930 after an explosion levelled the original, holds his family's photographs, letters and furniture.
Five mint-green 1921 villas on Avenida da Praia housed Macanese civil servants when the water still reached the seawall. They now show period interiors, Portuguese regional crafts and Macanese wedding customs.
Coloane was cleared of pirates in a 1910 Portuguese action commemorated by the obelisk on Largo Eduardo Marques. The 1928 chapel behind it once held the saint's arm bone alongside relics of Japanese and Vietnamese martyrs.
Teatro Dom Pedro V, opened 1860, is the first Western-style theatre built in China: pale-green neoclassical portico, 300 seats, still hosting concerts. It faces the 1591 church of the Spanish Augustinian friars.
The red-shuttered 'Street of Happiness' was Macau's brothel and opium quarter from the 1840s until licensing reforms closed it in the 1940s. Its two-storey shophouses now hold noodle kitchens and almond-cookie bakeries.
Laid out in 1906 by the son of merchant Lou Kau on a Suzhou model: grey limestone grottoes, a nine-turn bridge over lotus ponds and a colonial-style pavilion where Sun Yat-sen's supporters held meetings. Open 06:00–21:00.
Casa Garden, a 1770 merchant villa, became the British East India Company's Macau headquarters. Behind it the 1821 cemetery holds Robert Morrison, first translator of the Bible into Chinese, and painter George Chinnery.