Macau: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Macau was not conquered. Portuguese traders were allowed to settle here around 1557 after helping the Ming against pirates, and for nearly three hundred years Portugal paid China an annual ground rent for the use of the place. That is the whole key to this city: everything on this walk was built by people who knew they were tenants. Start at eight, before the tour groups reach the ruins, and bring water — the two climbs are short but steep.

A short history of Macau

In 1557 the Portuguese received permission from the Chinese authorities to settle on the Macau peninsula, and it became a trading post between China, Japan and Europe. The Church of St Paul was built in the early 17th century and burned down in 1835, leaving only its façade. On 20 December 1999 Portugal returned Macau to China, the last European colony in Asia. In 2002 the casino monopoly was abolished, and within a few years Macau overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenue. In 2005 the historic centre was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Macau

1
Ruins of St Paul’s
Only the façade and the steps survived an 1835 fire; the carving was done by Japanese Christian refugees
2
Senado Square
The wave paving was laid by Portuguese craftsmen in 1993, six years before the handover
3
Leal Senado Building
Loyal, because Macau stayed with Portugal through sixty years of Spanish rule; the title is on the wall
4
Holy House of Mercy
Founded 1569 and the oldest Western charitable institution in China; it still operates
5
St Dominic’s Church
Founded 1587 by three Spanish friars from Mexico; the first newspaper on Chinese soil was printed here
6
Cathedral of Macau
The seat of a diocese created in 1576 that once covered China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam
7
St Joseph’s Seminary
1758, and the church beside it holds a relic of St Francis Xavier — a bone from his arm
8
St Augustine’s Church and Square
The Easter procession starts here; the friars first roofed it with palm leaves that blew up in the wind
9
Dom Pedro V Theatre
1860, and the first Western-style theatre in China; still used for concerts
10
Sir Robert Ho Tung Library
An 1894 mansion left to the city by a Hong Kong tycoon in 1955; a reading garden at the back

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Four hundred and forty-two years

Senado Square · The black and white wave paving looks ancient and is not: Portuguese craftsmen were flown in to lay it in 1993, six years before the handover. Portugal spent its last decade here building the Portuguese-ness of Macau into the ground, because a UNESCO listing would outlast the flag.
Leal Senado · Loyal Senate — and the loyalty has a date. When Spain ruled Portugal between 1580 and 1640, Macau went on flying the Portuguese flag, and King João the Fourth rewarded it in 1654 with the title that is carved on the wall inside. A city on the far side of the world was more stubbornly Portuguese than Portugal.
Holy House of Mercy · Founded in 1569 by Macau’s first bishop, and it is the oldest Western charitable institution anywhere in China — still running, four and a half centuries on. It ran the first Western hospital in East Asia, an orphanage and a refuge for widows, and the small museum upstairs has the bishop’s skull in a case.
St Dominic’s Church · Three Spanish Dominicans from Mexico founded it in 1587, and the first newspaper ever printed on Chinese soil came off a press here in 1822 — a Portuguese liberal paper called A Abelha da China, the Bee of China. The bell tower museum has three floors of sacred art and almost no visitors.
Ruins of St Paul’s · Read the façade instead of photographing it. The carving was done between 1620 and 1640 by Japanese Christians who had fled the Tokugawa persecution, and they put their own world into it: a chrysanthemum, a Portuguese caravel, a Chinese lion, a skeleton with an inscription in Chinese characters saying that those who remember death will not sin. A typhoon fire in 1835 took everything behind it.
Monte Fort and the Macau Museum · On the twenty-fourth of June 1622 a Dutch fleet of eight hundred men landed to take Macau, which had almost no garrison. A Jesuit mathematics teacher named Giacomo Rho fired one of these cannon, hit the Dutch powder store, and the invasion collapsed. The Dutch never came back, and the day was Macau’s city holiday for three centuries.

The Chinese city that let them stay

The southern tip of the peninsula is where the Portuguese actually landed, and it is the half of Macau that was never Portuguese at all. Here a Chinese temple of 1488 gave the place its name, Chinese merchants built courtyard houses two streets from the cathedral, and Indian soldiers from Goa were barracked in a Mughal building. Go in the afternoon, when the light comes off the inner harbour, and end on Penha hill for the view.

A-Ma Temple · This temple stood here in 1488, before any Portuguese arrived. When they asked what the place was called, they were told A-Ma-Gau, the bay of A-Ma — and Macau has been called that ever since, in every language. The city carries the name of a Chinese sea goddess because of a misheard answer.
Maritime Museum · It faces the spot where tradition puts the first Portuguese landing. Inside is the thing worth coming for: the model of the junk fleet and the explanation of why China tolerated this settlement at all — Macau was the only legal channel for the silver of Japan and the silk of China to meet, and the Ming treasury wanted the duty.
Lilau Square · The spring under this square was Macau’s first water supply, and the Portuguese had a saying about it: whoever drinks from Lilau never forgets Macau. The houses round it are the oldest Portuguese residential quarter in the city, and the banyan root in the paving has been left where it broke through.
Mandarin’s House · Zheng Guanying built this four-thousand-square-metre compound in 1869, and his book Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age argued that China had to industrialise or be carved up. The Guangxu emperor read it. So, much later, did Mao and Sun Yat-sen. Free entry, and the courtyards are the quietest place on the peninsula.
Moorish Barracks · Built in 1874 to house two hundred policemen brought from Goa, by an Italian architect who gave it Mughal arches because the men were Indian. A Portuguese colony on Chinese soil, policed by Indians, in a building in the style of Muslim north India. Nothing about this is a single culture.
Penha Chapel · Five minutes up from St Lawrence’s, and the view from the terrace is the lesson: the inner harbour on one side with its working fishing fleet, the casino towers of Cotai on the other, and between them a sandbar that was water fifty years ago. Macau has roughly doubled its land area since 1912 by filling in the sea.

The city behind the casinos

Six hundred and eighty thousand people live in thirty-three square kilometres, which makes Macau the most densely populated territory on earth. Almost none of them live where the walking tours go. This route crosses the working northern half: the market the city buys at, a temple where China signed its first treaty with the United States, and a garden where retired men sing opera on weekday mornings. Go on a weekday before noon.

Three Lamps roundabout · The lamp post that named it has four lamps, not three, and nobody is sure why the name stuck. The district filled up in the sixties and seventies with ethnic Chinese expelled from Burma, Indonesia and Cambodia, which is why the best Burmese food in the Chinese-speaking world is sold in these lanes.
Red Market · A 1936 Art Deco market hall, red brick, by a Macanese architect, and it is still a wet market and nothing else: fish on the ground floor, pork on the first, vegetables above. Protected as heritage while working at full volume, which is rarer than it sounds.
Kun Iam Temple · In the garden behind the halls there is a round stone table. On the third of July 1844 the Treaty of Wangxia was signed at it — the first treaty between China and the United States, which gave Americans the right to be tried under their own law on Chinese soil. The table is still there and unmarked except by a small plaque.
Lou Lim Ioc Garden · A merchant built it in the 1870s in the Suzhou style, with a nine-turn bridge over the pond because evil spirits are said to travel only in straight lines. On weekday mornings the amateur Cantonese opera groups rehearse in the pavilions, and the entrance is free.
Tap Seac Square · Macau’s only large public square away from the tourist centre, finished in 2007 and ringed by restored mansions of the nineteen-twenties, one of which is the public library. It was the city’s football ground until the sixties, which is why it is this shape.
St Lazarus district · Three lanes of restored Portuguese houses around the church that served the leper hospital — that is what the name means. The Macanese community, Portuguese-Chinese by descent with its own creole called Patuá, lived here; fewer than fifty people still speak that language and UNESCO lists it as critically endangered.

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Getting to Macau and getting around

Macau International Airport · Built on reclaimed land off Taipa in 1995; seven kilometres from the old centre and a single runway
Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal · The fast ferries to Hong Kong: an hour across the delta, and they run most of the night
Taipa Ferry Terminal · The newer terminal beside the airport; most Hong Kong sailings moved here and it is nearer Cotai
Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge · Fifty-five kilometres with a six-kilometre undersea tunnel; opened 2018 and you cross it by bus
Portas do Cerco · The land border into Zhuhai, open almost round the clock; tens of thousands cross it daily to work
Lotus Bridge · The second land crossing, to Hengqin; this is the one for Zhuhai’s new district and the university
Barra LRT Station · The light railway opened in 2019 and reaches the peninsula only at this one point

Cheap eats in Macau

Macanese food is probably the oldest fusion cuisine on earth. From the fifteen hundreds Portuguese sailors arrived here having stopped in Africa, Goa, Malacca and Timor, married local women, and the kitchen that resulted used Portuguese technique on whatever the route had supplied: turmeric and coconut from India, shrimp paste from Malaya, piri-piri from Mozambique, soy and ginger from China. It was a home cuisine, not a restaurant one, which is why much of it is now rare and why the counter food is where the city still eats. Fifteen to sixty patacas a dish, two to seven dollars, and the pataca is pegged near the Hong Kong dollar — which is accepted everywhere, usually at par, so you lose a few per cent paying in it.

Pork chop bun · A fried pork chop, bone in, in a Portuguese roll and nothing else; four dollars
Pastel de nata · The Macau egg tart: burnt on top, custard not pastry cream; a dollar and a half
Almond cookies · Pressed in wooden moulds over charcoal and handed out free along the street; a dollar a piece
Serradura · Sawdust pudding: cream and crushed biscuit in layers, Macanese and nowhere else; three dollars
Beef jerky · Sliced thin and grilled while you watch, in every shop on the street; sold by weight
Burmese noodles at Three Lamps · Mohinga and coconut noodle soup two blocks from the market; three dollars and genuinely Burmese
Wonton noodles · The Cantonese bowl, bamboo-pressed noodles; three dollars, and the old shops are on Rua dos Mercadores
The Red Market cooked-food floor · Where the stallholders eat; congee, noodles and rice plates for two to three dollars

Museums in Macau

Macau has one of the highest museum densities anywhere, because for its last twenty years Portugal built them deliberately: a colony that knew it was leaving spent its final decade proving in brick and glass that it had been here. Most are small, most are nearly empty, and several are free. The Macau Museum inside Monte Fort is the one to do first — it explains the whole city in an hour and nothing else here makes sense without it.

Macau Museum · Three floors inside the fortress; 15 patacas, and free on Tuesdays and on the 15th
Macau Museum of Art · Free, five floors, and strong on the Western painters who worked the China coast
Handover Gifts Museum · Free; the gift each Chinese province sent for 20 December 1999, and no two are alike
Maritime Museum · Why China allowed this place to exist: silver, silk, and the duty the Ming wanted
Grand Prix Museum · Rebuilt in 2021 with simulators; the race has run on these streets since 1954
Mandarin’s House · Free; a four-thousand-metre Chinese compound restored over eight years and almost unvisited
Lou Kau Mansion · Free, one minute off Senado Square, and almost nobody turns the corner to it
Sun Yat-sen Memorial House · Free; he practised medicine here from 1892 and the Moorish-style house is a 1930s rebuild

Holy places in Macau

Twenty-two of the buildings on the UNESCO list are religious, and the point of the list is that they alternate: a Catholic church and a Chinese temple on the same street, sometimes sharing a wall. This was never a Christian city — Catholics are about five per cent of the population and have been a minority throughout — but Macau was the base from which the Jesuits reached China, Japan and Vietnam, and for two centuries every missionary to East Asia passed through here. Churches are free and open; temples are free, smoky and busy.

Ruins of St Paul’s · The façade and the crypt; the crypt holds the bones of Japanese and Vietnamese martyrs
A-Ma Temple · 1488 and older than the colony; six prayer halls up the hillside under a rock
Kun Iam Temple · 1627; the stone table in its garden is where China signed its first treaty with America
Na Tcha Temple · A three-metre temple of 1888 built hard against the Jesuit ruins; both are on the UNESCO list
St Joseph’s Seminary Church · 1758, the finest Baroque interior here, and a relic of St Francis Xavier’s arm bone
Chapel of St Francis Xavier, Coloane · 1928; built to house the bones of the Nagasaki martyrs after the ruins were abandoned
Protestant Cemetery · Robert Morrison, who translated the Bible into Chinese, is buried here
Tam Kung Temple, Coloane · 1862; a dragon boat a metre long carved from a single whale bone sits inside

Nature and day trips near Macau

A territory of thirty-three square kilometres with the densest population on earth still has real forest, and it is all on Coloane. The island was left alone because it had no fresh water and a pirate problem, and by the time Macau wanted land it was cheaper to fill in the sea between the islands than to build on the hills. The result is that twenty minutes from the casinos there are eight kilometres of subtropical trail with nobody on it. Go early: it is humid from May to October and there is no shade on the beaches.

Coloane Trail · Eight kilometres round the island’s hills; real forest, and signposted at every junction
Hac Sa Beach · The black sand beach, with a seawater pool behind it; the sand is now partly imported
Cheoc Van Beach · The sheltered southern cove; smaller, cleaner water and a public pool on the headland
Seac Pai Van Park · Free; twenty hectares on the Coloane hillside with a walk-through aviary
Guia Hill · The peninsula’s only real green hill; a 1.7-kilometre loop, and the cable car up is 2 patacas each way
Taipa Grande Hill · The hill behind the airport; from the top the reclamation is obvious and the planes are close
Nam Van and Sai Van lakeside · Two kilometres of flat waterside path under the tower; the city’s evening walk

Things to do in Macau with kids

Macau is unexpectedly good with children, and for an odd reason: the casinos are legally barred from letting anyone under twenty-one onto the floor, so every resort built something else to keep families spending — water parks, a ferris wheel, an aviation museum, free shuttle buses from every border crossing. Use the shuttles: they are free, frequent, air-conditioned and they go everywhere the public buses go, which in forty degrees of humidity with a pushchair matters more than anything else on this list.

Giant Panda Pavilion · Free, inside Seac Pai Van Park on Coloane; also red pandas and two enclosures
Golden Reel ferris wheel · A figure-of-eight wheel threaded through the building, 130 metres up; the only one shaped like that
Macao Science Centre · A Pei Partnership cone on the water, 2009; fourteen galleries and a planetarium
Grand Prix simulators · Rebuilt in 2021 with full racing simulators of the real street circuit; the best value here
Aviary at Seac Pai Van · A walk-through enclosure in the park, free, and there are flamingos
Taipa Houses · Five green villas by the water with a boardwalk and wetland birds; easy with small children
Cheoc Van public pool · Saltwater, above the beach, open in summer and a few patacas to get in

Nightlife in Macau

Macau does not really have a nightlife district, and understanding why explains the city. Gambling has been legal here since 1847 and casino revenue is around eighty per cent of government income, so the resorts are designed to keep you inside them, and the independent bar scene that exists in Hong Kong never had room to grow. What is here instead: a handful of good bars in Taipa Village and St Lazarus, the Portuguese wine the territory still imports in quantity, and the fact that everything in the casinos runs twenty-four hours.

Taipa Village bars · The one genuine walkable cluster; Portuguese wine lists and tables in the lanes
St Lazarus bars · The small independent scene, in the restored lanes; quiet and early, not a late district
Macau Tower lounge · 223 metres up with a glass floor; a drink buys the view and the whole delta is lit
Fisherman’s Wharf · The 2006 theme quarter by the ferry terminal; half empty at night and oddly pleasant
The casino floors · Open round the clock, free to walk through, and no one under twenty-one is admitted

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Frequently asked questions about Macau

What is there to see in Macau?

The top sights in Macau are Ruins of St Paul’s, Senado Square and Leal Senado Building. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Macau?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Macau without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Macau?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Macau, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Four hundred and forty-two years.

How do you get to Macau and get around?

The main ways are Macau International Airport, Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal and Taipa Ferry Terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Macau, and for how much?

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