Bairro das Fontainhas old quarter

This guide to the Bairro das Fontainhas old quarter in Goa opens with an open-eyed crucifix in a small chapel just off the street, once kept inside the Portuguese Inquisition's tribunal in Old Goa, where every other carved Christ in the region keeps its eyes shut in death. It follows how disease drove that colonial administration downriver into this pastel-painted neighborhood, laid out around 1770 by a Goan trader known as Mossmikar on former coconut-plantation land. Walk the balconies and azulejo-tiled lanes that one historian called a small chunk of Portugal washed ashore on the Indian Ocean, and look for the chapel where the crucifix still watches.