Things to See in Macau

Among the best of Macau's gardens, and the only Chinese-style garden you can find in Macau, is cool and shady Lou Lim Ioc Garden, with huge shade trees, lotus ponds, bamboo groves, grottoes and a bridge with nine turns (to escape from evil spirits who can only move in straight lines). Local people use the park to practise t'ai chi or play traditional Chinese musical instruments.

Dating from 1627, this is Macau's oldest and most interesting temple. The likeness of Kun Iam, goddess of mercy, is in the main hall while the adjacent rooms honour her with a collection of pictures and scrolls. On a less religious note, the first treaty of trade and friendship between the US and China was signed in the temple's terraced gardens in 1844. These days the incense-shrouded complex is thronged with fortune tellers and visitors.

The most famous sight in Macau, the façade and stairway are all that remain of this early-17th-century Jesuit church, called Tai Sam Ba in Cantonese. With its wonderful statues, portals and engravings that effectively make up a 'sermon in stone' and a Biblia pauperum (Bible of the poor), some consider the ruins to be the greatest monument to Christianity in Asia to help the illiterate understand the Passion of Christ and the lives of the saints.