Malaysia's oldest church, built in 1521 by Portuguese nobleman Duarte Coelho atop St. Paul's Hill, its ruins reveal centuries of Portuguese, Dutch, and British religious history.
St. Paul’s Church crowns St. Paul’s Hill as the oldest surviving church building in Malaysia. Built in 1521 by Duarte Coelho, a Portuguese nobleman, the chapel was originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary and called Nossa Senhora da Annunciada. When Coelho’s ship narrowly escaped a storm in the South China Sea, he commissioned the church as an offering of gratitude.
Three Centuries of Occupation
The Jesuits took over the chapel in 1548 and expanded it, welcoming Saint Francis Xavier, whose body was held here before being moved to Goa. A belfry tower rose in 1590. When the Dutch conquered Melaka in 1641, they reconsecrated the building as St. Paul’s Church, calling it the Bovernkerk (High Church), and used it for their own services until Christ Church opened in the Dutch Square in 1753. After the British took control in 1824, they converted the church into a powder magazine and let it decay.
The Ruins Today
What remains is the roofless stone shell, its thick walls still bearing Latin epitaphs and the graves of Portuguese and Dutch merchants and officials, their names carved into plaques set flush with the floor. A tall wooden cross stands at the apex. From the hilltop, views extend across the Malacca Strait and down toward the Porta de Santiago and Chinese temples below. A small museum adjoins the site.
Visiting
The climb up the hill takes five minutes. Morning and late afternoon light is best for photography. Nearby stands the Melaka Sultanate Palace Museum and the Porta de Santiago.
