Naveen Marasinghe is an Online Marketing Executive at eMarketingEye which is a search engine marketing company that offers integrated Internet marketing solutions and specializes in serving the online travel and hospitality industry. (http://www.emarketingeye.com/ )
Out of all the historic Portuguese military buildings in Macau, the Monte Fort is the oldest and it lies towards the east of St. Paul’s Ruins which is another important archeological site. When the fort was constructed in 1616 it was part of the St. Paul’s complex and belonged to the Jesuits who ran the church, it was meant to be a defense outpost that would repel pirate attacks on the church. Through out the course of history it served a multitude of purposes such as being a military fort, the residence of the Governor of Macau, as Macau’s first museum and the home of the Macau Meteorological Department.
The fort was built with a quadrilateral design with large bastions of about 100 meters in circumference being positioned at its four corners. Despite being having a quadrangular layout the actual construction of fort gives it a somewhat irregular shape and has a total floor area 20,000 square feet.
When the Monte Fort was built it was designed so that could withstand a siege of up to two years. The main buildings inside the fort are the barracks, the storehouses and the cisterns. The fort is actually a part of a larger complex that includes the St. Paul’s Church and an educational facility. From the cannons that were installed inside the fort the Portuguese were able to target the inner and outer harbors of Macau as well as Guangdong Province on the Chinese mainland.
However, the canons were only used once, during the 1622 Dutch invasion of Macau which culminated with a Portuguese victory. Following a number of religious disagreements and controversies in the Catholic Church Jesuits were expelled from Macau and the Monte Forte fell into disrepair. The St. Paul’s Church and the Monte Fort were both gutted in fire that signaled the end of the whole complex in 1831.
In 1965, the barracks building inside fort was turned in to the Macau Meteorological Department and in 1998 the Macau Museum was established here. Being an important attraction in Macau that draws in thousand of visitors, a Macau hotel can easily be located in the vicinity. A luxury hotel in Macau that offers comfortable accommodation as well as great transportation links is the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel.
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