St. Cajetan Church, Goa
Dome-crowned Greek-cross church built by Italian friars over a mysterious seventy-two-foot well.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to St. Cajetan Church in Goa centers on a covered well beneath its dome, seventy-two feet deep, that nobody can quite agree on: some say the builders struck water while digging foundations, others that it predates the church, left over from a Hindu temple or the palace of Adil Shah. It follows the Italian Theatine friars who arrived in sixteen forty hoping to convert the kingdom of Golconda, were turned away twice, and ended up petitioning the Portuguese king for land here instead. You'll hear the competing claims about which Roman church the building's Greek-cross dome actually copies. Look down into the well once more before you go, and read the Latin motto running around the base of the cupola.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Church of St. Francis of Assisi
Baroque-fronted church over a floor paved with carved sixteenth-century Portuguese tombstones.
Se Cathedral
Portuguese-era cathedral with a lopsided facade, one bell tower lost since seventeen seventy-six.
Museum Of Christian Art
Former royal convent of cloistered nuns turned gallery of silver, ivory and painted sacred art.
Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church Panaji Goa
Hilltop Baroque church founded as a mariners' chapel, crowned by a whitewashed zigzag staircase and Goa's second-largest bell.
St. Augustine Tower Goa
Solitary forty-six-metre laterite belfry, last survivor of four towers of a ruined seventeenth-century church.
Convent of Santa Monica and The Chapel of The Weeping Cross
Cloistered convent chapel where a carved crucifix reportedly wept blood before a viceroy in the year sixteen thirty-six.