Four churches, one afternoon, no coach party.
Most visitors see the Basilica and leave. The complex is seven buildings across two square kilometres, and the ones nobody walks to are the ones still standing as they were built.
In the order the route takes them.
Basilica of Bom Jesus
1605, and the only one built in laterite left deliberately unplastered.
Chapel of St Catherine
The oldest structure on the site and the one almost nobody visits.
St Augustine’s Tower
Forty-six metres of what was a five-storey church, abandoned in 1835.
The thing most people get wrong.
Old Goa held more people than Lisbon in 1600. The churches are what survived, not what was built — two centuries separate the earliest and latest, and the styles argue with each other.
The capital moved to Panaji because the river silted and the epidemics did not stop. It is a protected monument under the Archaeological Survey of India and a working parish, and both impose rules we would rather you heard now.
Six fixed slots a week.
Monday and Tuesday, 15:00
The site is at its worst in the middle of the day and its best in the last two hours.
Wednesday and Friday, 15:30
Our slots are cleared with the Basilica office each week rather than assumed.
Saturday 14:30 · Sunday 16:00
The two-church version stays on paved ground, at the same price.
Seven buildings, two square kilometres.
Most visitors see the Basilica and leave. The ones nobody walks to are the ones still standing as they were built.
From the trail
Old Goa Church Trail
Four things, and two rules.
The dress code is applied at the door rather than by us, and the photography rules are the parish’s.
Covered shoulders and knees
Required for entry to all four working churches. There is nowhere on site to buy a cover-up.
Two litres of water
One stall at the Basilica end, nothing at the St Augustine end.
A hat, genuinely
The walk between buildings is completely open and we go in the afternoon.
Shoes, not sandals
Exposed foundations and loose stone around the ruins.
No flash in the Bom Jesus
Photography is permitted without flash. The relic chamber is not photographable at all.
Tell us about mobility
Mention it when booking and we run the shortened two-church route on paved ground, at the same price.
Walk the buildings nobody walks to.
Twelve people maximum, and the short route is always available if the full trail is too much. The monuments are free; our fee is for the guiding, with no gate charge added.