Casa Garden in Macau
Historical Ancient House and Garden

Beside Camões Park

First built in 1770, the Casa Garden was originally the villa of the wealthy merchant Manuel Pereira. At a later period the Casa Garden was rented out to the Macao Branch of the English East India Company as a residence for commercial directors, taipans and high-ranking British officers stationed in China.

The Casa Garden was taken over by the Portuguese Government in 1885 and converted into a museum in the 1960s.

The Casa Garden is now the head office of the Orient Foundation, a Macau cultural foundation.

Anyone who knows the paintings of George Chinnery will recognize many scenes in today’s old town. In his days, this area was something like a British enclave, because the Casa Garden was rented by British merchants, until the founding of Hong Kong. Chinnery arrived in Macau in 1825. He stayed until his death in 1852 and became the doyen of China Coast artists.

Alongside the Casa Garden is the Camões Garden which was a popular retreat, and Chinnery painted it many times, as he did the nearby Monte Fort and St. Paul’s (his drawing of the church is one of the few showing it before the fire)...

The exterior walls of the Casa Garden hosue are painted white. The mansion has arched windows and shutters, there is a marble balcony and stone steps and the main hall is splendidly decorated with a southern European style.

The adjacent early-19th- century cemetery contains the graves of Protestant residents, sailors and visitors, plus a motley crew of opium traders, missionaries, and some of the crew of Commodore Perry’s fleet that opened up Japan. George Chinnery's tomb is one of the most elaborate. Also here is the Morrison grave that he painted in 1838.

"A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity
Rococco images of saint and saviour
Promises its gamblers fortunes when they die.
Churches among brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behaviour.
A town of such indulgence need not fear
Those mortal sins by which the strong are killed,
And limbs and government are torn to pieces.
Religious clocks will strike; the childish vices
Will safeguard the low virtues of the child,
And nothing can happen here."
(‘Macao’, by W.H.Auden, 1938)

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