Luxury hotels in Macau

Macau guide

Macau: the Ruins of St. Paul's and the historic centre

Portuguese squares and Chinese temples side by side, egg tarts and the lights of Cotai.

The Ruins of St. Paul's, the stone façade of a seventeenth-century Jesuit church at the top of a grand stairway, is Macau's most cited sight and part of the Historic Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Walk down to Senado Square's wave-patterned pavement and visit the A-Ma Temple, which gave the city its name.

Taipa Village has Portuguese-era houses and restaurants serving Macanese cuisine, and the egg tarts are a must. Cotai's resorts and shows light up the night, and Hong Kong is about an hour away by ferry or across the bridge.

Taipa Village and Macanese cuisine

Taipa Village, with its colonial houses, the Taipa Houses Museum and Rua do Cunha, is the most cited place in Macau to discover Macanese cuisine, a blend of Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and Malay flavours recognised by UNESCO as part of Macau's gastronomy.

Try minchi, African chicken and pork chop buns, and the egg tarts at the famous bakeries of Coloane and Taipa. Macau also has an exceptional concentration of Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurants, and Coloane Village, quieter still, is a short drive away.

The Cotai Strip and its shows

Cotai, the strip of reclaimed land between Taipa and Coloane, is lined with some of the largest resorts in the world and is the most cited area of modern Macau, with replicas of Venice and Paris, shopping arcades and celebrity restaurants.

Shows are part of the experience, and the Macau Tower, 338 metres tall, has an observation deck and one of the highest bungee jumps in the world. Hong Kong is about an hour away by ferry or across the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge.