A tribute to the artisans

I said I would blog during my holiday to Goa but quickly realised that it was not going to be possible. I was meeting my siblings and their families after nine years and it would not be fair to them if I started to spend time in front of a computer. I have finally got some time to go through my pictures and I promised myself that I would get at least one photo blog out this weekend.


So here it is. 


This particular blog concentrates on Old Goa and is in  particular is a tribute to the great artisans. The same artisans who centuries ago have done such marvelous work on the various churches there. Over the last sixteen years my brother Patrick and my brother-in-law Arsenio have  restored many of these fine pieces of architecture. Arsenio accompanied me to Old Goa and his contacts and knowledge of the area was of great help.


We left Panjim at around 6:30 in the morning and arrived first at the Tower of the Church of St. Augustine. I will get to those pictures later. As a kid whenever we went to Old Goa we would be taken to the two main churches i.e   the Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Se Cathedral. Arsenio suggested to me that the Church of St. Cajetan had some really good architecture and we went to see this church. 




I got this image of this beautiful church from  another location. I got up to the Church of mount Carmel and got this image. 

I will not get into the details of this particular church as the image below provides the official details.

The interior of this church is really spetacular. I entered the church and went WOW. The main dome gets a lot of light and the rest of the church not as much. At first I thought I would have to do HDR images but quickly realised that they strictly do not allow the use of tripods. So I had to play around with settings and hope to  create some magic in post processing. Sometimes i just placed the camera on the altar and used a remote release. Here are some images.

Image of the main dome.

Not really a great composition, but I wanted to show the detail on the workmanship on the roof.

In the image below one gets the feel of the whole ceiling and the pillars. By now you may have noticed I have converted all the interior images to black and white. Well the interior is all pure white (except the alters and pulpits). I felt black and white really brought out the artistic workmanship inside the church.

Image of the alter. 

After exiting in the church compound we found the gate of the palace of "Adil Shah".

We had started the morning at the ruins of the Church of St. Agustine. Here are the images from that session. As I have said I am trying to highlight the workmanship that went into many of these structures.


Here are the remains of the tower.

The ruins from the original church.

After an little detour to the Spice farm  in Usgao ( will cover that in my next blog), we came back to Old Goa. Spent some time around the Se Cathedral. 


Here is a image of the Se I got from the compound of the Church of mount Carmel. 

This is the interior of a chapel/church adjacent to the Se Cathedral. 

Image of a door on the side of St. Catherines Church. Lots of detail in there.

This is a structural beam inside the museum in the Se Cathedral complex. Even the beam had artistic detail. 

If you ever wonder how these enormous churches where build this might lead to some clues to your imaginations. The original structures were always build with the readily available laterite stone. But these were the millstones that were used to grind the mortar and the basalt to bind everything together. Wonder how many men would be required to turn this thing around. 

And finally an image of the facade of the Basilica of Bom Jesus. Just to display the detail.

And this was a clearest image I could get of the body of St. Francis Xavier. 

 I end with a big salute to all the artisans. I hope whoever goes through this blog entry enjoys the images. 


Cheers.. Fidelis.