Museum Of Christian Art

This guide to the Museum of Christian Art in Goa opens inside the former Convent of Santa Monica, raised from sixteen oh six by Archbishop Aleixo de Meneses and once home to roughly a hundred fifty cloistered nuns who sailed in from as far as Sri Lanka and Japan and, by rule, never left again. It follows what that closed world produced, silver and ivory sacred objects made mostly by local Goan and Hindu craftsmen turning a foreign faith's imagery into work built on old skills, now displayed since nineteen ninety-four behind glass. You'll hear about a bust of Saint Margaret with a hollow carved for a relic that may never have arrived. The chapel next door holds the reason pilgrims once outnumbered the nuns here.