Goa: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque took this stretch of river from the Sultan of Bijapur, and within a century Old Goa had around two hundred thousand people — larger than Lisbon or London at the time — and was called the Rome of the East. Then cholera and malaria emptied it, the capital moved downriver to Panaji in 1843, and the jungle took the rest. Seven churches survive and UNESCO listed them in 1986. Ninety minutes, flat, and go before eleven: there is no shade between the churches.
A short history of Goa
Before the Europeans arrived, Goa was ruled by Hindu kingdoms and then by the Sultanate of Bijapur. In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque captured it, and it became the capital of the Portuguese empire in Asia. The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa holds the remains of the missionary Francis Xavier. In 1560 the Inquisition was established here, persecuting Hindus, Muslims and New Christians of Jewish origin. Epidemics in the 17th century emptied the old city, and the capital moved to Panjim. Portugal held Goa until December 1961, when the Indian army entered it, and in 1987 it became a state within India.
The ten best sights in Goa
1FontainhasThe Latin quarter: ochre and blue houses, and a repainting law
2Immaculate Conception Church1619, white, with a zigzag double stair; sailors gave thanks here on landing
3CampalThe riverfront promenade; the Kala Academy and the film festival are here
4Miramar BeachWhere the Mandovi meets the sea; the city beach, not a swimming one
5Dona PaulaA headland with a legend about a viceroy’s daughter and a fisherman
6Old GoaSeven churches, UNESCO listed in 1986; the city here once rivalled Lisbon
7Basilica of Bom JesusHolds the body of St Francis Xavier, shown every ten years; free
8Sé CathedralThe largest church in Asia; one of its two towers fell in 1776
9Church of St CajetanModelled on St Peter’s in Rome, at a quarter of the size
10St Augustine Tower46 metres of a church that collapsed; the rest is rubble and trees
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Goa →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Goa:
Free walking tours in Goa
The city that was bigger than Lisbon
In 1510 Afonso de Albuquerque took this stretch of river from the Sultan of Bijapur, and within a century Old Goa had around two hundred thousand people — larger than Lisbon or London at the time — and was called the Rome of the East. Then cholera and malaria emptied it, the capital moved downriver to Panaji in 1843, and the jungle took the rest. Seven churches survive and UNESCO listed them in 1986. Ninety minutes, flat, and go before eleven: there is no shade between the churches.
- Basilica of Bom Jesus · Finished in 1605, and the only church in Old Goa whose laterite exterior was never plastered — the plaster was stripped in 1950 and never replaced, which is why it is red while the others are white. Inside, in a silver casket, is the body of Francis Xavier, who died in 1552 off the Chinese coast and whose remains are shown to the public roughly once a decade. Entry is free.
- Sé Cathedral · The largest church in Asia, begun in 1562 and eighty years in the building. It had two bell towers; the southern one collapsed in 1776 and was never rebuilt, which is why the facade looks unbalanced. The remaining tower holds the Golden Bell, said to be the largest in Goa, and it rang for the autos-da-fé of the Goa Inquisition in the square outside.
- St Augustine Tower · Forty-six metres of a single bell tower standing over a field of rubble. The church was abandoned in 1835 when the Portuguese expelled the religious orders, the vault fell in 1842 and the rest came down over the following century. Its bell was taken to Panaji and now hangs in the Immaculate Conception church at the top of the stairs.
- Church of St Cajetan · Built by Italian friars in the 1650s as a quarter-scale model of St Peter’s in Rome, dome and all. Underneath it is a well that predates the church by centuries — Hindu, and still there, covered by a wooden lid inside the building. The friars had been sent to Golconda, were refused entry, and settled for Goa.
- Chapel of St Catherine · Albuquerque took the city on the twenty-fifth of November 1510, the feast of St Catherine, and ordered a chapel built on the spot where he entered through the city wall. It was mud at first and rebuilt in stone in 1550. It is the smallest building on the site and the oldest thing the Portuguese put up here.
- Viceroy’s Arch · Every new viceroy arrived by ship, landed at the quay below and walked through this arch to take office — there were around a hundred and sixty of them between 1505 and 1961. On the river side is a statue of Vasco da Gama, whose grandson built it; on the city side, a figure of a European standing over a prone Indian, which is not subtle and was not meant to be.
Panaji, which is the opposite
When Old Goa was finally abandoned the capital moved nine kilometres downriver to a small customs post called Panjim, and what was built there in the nineteenth century is completely different in scale: narrow lanes, two-storey houses, balcões — the covered porches where Goans sit and watch the street. Fontainhas is the one part of urban India that looks Mediterranean, and there is a law requiring the houses to be repainted in ochre, blue, green or yellow every year after the monsoon. Ninety minutes, and go in the late afternoon.
- Immaculate Conception Church · Built in 1541 as a chapel where sailors gave thanks on landing, before they went on to Old Goa — the ship had come from Lisbon and the voyage took six months. The white zigzag double staircase was added in 1871, and the bell at the top came from the ruined Augustinian church up the river.
- Fontainhas · The Latin quarter, built in the nineteenth century on land reclaimed from a creek by a Goan who had made a fortune in Mozambique. The repainting rule is real and comes from the Portuguese period: lime wash was the only legal finish for non-church buildings, so houses had to be colour-washed every year after the rains, and the custom stuck as a heritage regulation.
- Panaji market · Fish from six in the morning, and the fish auction is run by women — in Goa the catch belongs to the boat but the selling is a woman’s trade, and has been for as long as anyone records. Look for the local specifics: kingfish steaks, dried prawns in a basket, and the small black kokum fruit that goes into the curry instead of tamarind.
- Campal · The riverfront promenade with the Kala Academy at one end, designed by Charles Correa. Every November the International Film Festival of India takes over this strip — it moved here permanently from Delhi in 2004, which is why a state of one and a half million people has India’s national film festival.
- Miramar · Where the Mandovi meets the Arabian Sea, and the current at the river mouth is strong enough that this is not a swimming beach, whatever it looks like. The name is Portuguese for sea view. On the headland beyond it is the Cabo, the old viceregal palace, now the governor’s residence and closed to the public.
- Divar ferry · A free flat-bottomed ferry crosses the Mandovi every fifteen minutes to an island with one village, no traffic lights and very few cars. Divar was a major Hindu pilgrimage site before the Portuguese destroyed the temples in 1541 and built a church on the hill. The Bonderam festival in August re-enacts a dispute over property boundaries with mock flag fights.
The coast and what is behind it
Goa has a hundred and five kilometres of coast and the beaches are not interchangeable: the north is loud and built up, the far north is where the long-stay crowd goes, the south is quiet and expensive, and the far south has turtle beaches with building restrictions. The season runs October to May and in the monsoon almost every shack is taken down and stored, by law. This route needs a scooter or a taxi — it is a coastline, not a walk.
- Fort Aguada · Built in 1612 to stop the Dutch and the Marathas coming up the Mandovi, and named after the freshwater spring inside it — its cistern held two and a half million litres, which is why every Portuguese ship stopped here to refill. The lighthouse of 1864 is the oldest of its kind in Asia. Part of the fort was used as a prison until 2015.
- Calangute and Baga · This is where the hippies arrived in the mid-sixties, having come overland through Iran and Afghanistan, and where Goa’s reputation was made. What stands here now is the opposite of that: hotels, water sports and the densest stretch of beach shacks in the state. The licences for those shacks are issued annually and they must be dismantled before the monsoon.
- Anjuna flea market · Wednesdays from October to April, and it began in the seventies with travellers selling their own belongings to fund the next leg — a guitar, a camera, a pair of jeans. It is now mostly Kashmiri, Tibetan and Rajasthani traders, and the original character is gone, but the day and the place have not moved in fifty years.
- Chapora Fort · A 1617 Portuguese fort on a headland, built over an older Muslim one — the name comes from Shahpura, the Shah’s town. It is now known almost entirely for one thing: a 2001 Bollywood film was shot here and the walls became a pilgrimage site for Indian tourists, who come at sunset in large numbers for a photograph.
- Arambol · Walk north from the main beach around the rocks and there is a freshwater lake fed by a hot spring directly behind the sand, with a banyan tree in the forest above it. This is where the long-stay crowd went when Anjuna got built up, and there is a drum circle on the beach at sunset most days in season.
- Palolem · A kilometre-long crescent in the far south, and the silent discos here are not a gimmick: a court ruling and a state noise law ban amplified music on beaches after ten at night, so the clubs hand out headphones with two or three channels and everyone dances to a different song. It works, and it is specific to this beach.
Getting to Goa and getting around
- Dabolim Airport · The old airport in the south; it shares a runway with a navy base
- Mopa Airport · Opened 2023 in the far north; much closer to Arambol than to Palolem
- Madgaon station · The main railway station, in the south; the Konkan line runs to Mumbai
- Thivim station · The northern station; closer if you are staying anywhere past Baga
- Panaji · The capital and the bus hub; ferries to Divar leave from the quay
Cheap eats in Goa
Goan food is the one Indian cuisine with a Portuguese layer in it, and the markers are specific: vinegar, which almost no other Indian kitchen uses; pork, which almost no other Indian kitchen cooks; chillies and cashews and potatoes, all brought from the Americas through here. Add coconut and kokum from the local side and you have the whole thing. Fifty to four hundred rupees.
- Fish thali · Under 200 rupees; the curry is refilled
- Pork vindaloo · Made a day ahead; better on day two
- Xacuti and cafreal · Cafreal is the green one; the name means Africa
- Poi bread · The baker comes at dawn with a bicycle horn
- Feni · Protected name; cashew feni is February to May
- Bebinca · Sixteen layers; keeps for weeks
- Ros omelette · From a cart after dark; no two are the same
- Beach shack food · Order it by weight, grilled, with rechado
Museums in Goa
Goa was Portuguese for four hundred and fifty-one years — from 1510 until Indian troops took it in thirty-six hours in December 1961 — and that is far longer than the British held anywhere in India. The physical record is seven UNESCO-listed churches, a seminary with the first printing press in Asia, and mansions still lived in by the families who built them.
- Basilica of Bom Jesus · Free; the casket is in the south transept
- Sé Cathedral · The Inquisition met in the square outside
- St Augustine Tower · Free; the rubble is most of the church
- Rachol Seminary · The first press in Asia worked here
- Braganza House · Two halves, two families, two tickets
- Reis Magos Fort · Restored 2012; the best Mandovi view
- Shri Mangueshi Temple · The deity was moved to escape the Inquisition
- Tambdi Surla · The oldest building in Goa; take a car
Nature and day trips near Goa
Goa is small — three thousand seven hundred square kilometres, India’s smallest state — and it has three distinct landscapes stacked within an hour of each other: a hundred and five kilometres of coast, a belt of rice fields and coconut groves behind it, and the Western Ghats, one of the eight most biodiverse places on earth, along the eastern border. The monsoon runs June to September and closes much of it.
- Dudhsagar Falls · Forest jeep only; closed in the monsoon
- Bhagwan Mahaveer Sanctuary · Older than the Himalayas; a third of India’s plants
- Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary · By ferry to Chorão; go at high tide
- Turtle beaches · November to March; no lights, no music
- Netravali · A bubbling spring; far from any beach
- Divar and Chorão · Free ferries; the khazan system is a thousand years old
- The monsoon · Everything closes; rates drop by two thirds
- Spice plantation · Lunch is included; pepper is native here
Holy places in Goa
Goa is around a quarter Catholic and two-thirds Hindu, and the two are tangled together in ways that exist nowhere else in India: Hindu temples with facades that look like churches, Catholic festivals with Hindu attendance, and families where the same surname covers both. The Inquisition ran here for two hundred and fifty years and is the uncomfortable fact underneath all of it.
- The Inquisition · 1560 to 1812; almost nothing on site says so
- The temples that moved · All the big temples are in one inland district
- Shanta Durga Temple · A Hindu temple that looks like a church
- Francis Xavier · His feast is 3 December; a public holiday
- Village chapels · Lit at night; each has its own feast day
- Shigmo and Carnival · February and March; both fill the same streets
Things to do in Goa with kids
- Palolem · A sheltered crescent with calm shallow water at the south end
- Divar ferry · A free ferry across the river, and an island with no traffic
- Spice plantation · Things to smell and taste, an elephant-free tour, and lunch
- Salim Ali Sanctuary · A boat through mangroves; kingfishers and mudskippers
- Reis Magos Fort · Ramparts to run on and the best river view in Goa
- Chapora Fort · A short climb to a ruin over two bays; go at sunset
- Mandrem bamboo bridge · A creek behind the beach crossed on a bamboo footbridge
- Arambol sweet lake · A freshwater lake behind the sand; warm and shallow
Nightlife in Goa
Goa’s night has three completely separate versions: the loud commercial strip at Baga and Candolim, the trance and long-stay scene in the far north around Anjuna and Vagator, and the silent-headphone clubs at Palolem in the south. A state noise law bans amplified music outdoors after ten at night, and that law is why the headphones exist. Season is October to May.
- The noise law · No outdoor music after ten; hence the headphones
- Anjuna and Vagator · Where Goa trance was made; clifftop clubs
- Baga and Tito’s Lane · Loud and mostly domestic tourists now
- The floating casinos · On boats because land casinos are illegal
- Sunset at Chapora · Free; fills an hour before sunset
- Saturday night market · Saturdays in season, from six
Frequently asked questions about Goa
What is there to see in Goa?
The top sights in Goa are Fontainhas, Immaculate Conception Church and Campal. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Goa?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Goa without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Goa?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Goa, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The city that was bigger than Lisbon.
How do you get to Goa and get around?
The main ways are Dabolim Airport, Mopa Airport and Madgaon station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Goa, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Goa that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Goa for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.