The Ruins of St. Paul's (Ruínas de São Paulo / Sam Ba Sing Tzik) is one of Macau's most famous landmarks. The complex comprise what was originally St. Paul's College and the Church of St. Paul also known as "Mater Dei", a Portuguese church dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle, built between 1582 and 1602 by the Jesuits, and destroyed by a fire that started in the kitchen of the college in 1835. The ruins consist of the southern granite façade, which sits on a small hill, with 68 stone steps leading up to it, and the crypts of the Jesuits.
The façade is rich in ornamentation carved between 1620 and 1627 by Japanese Christians and local craftsmen under the direction of Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola. The carvings include Jesuit images with Oriental themes, such as The Blessed Virgin Mary stepping on a seven-headed hydra. From 1990 to 1995 the ruins were excavated, numerous religious artifacts being found, together with the relics of the Japanese Christian martyrs and the monastic clergy, including the founder of the Jesuit college in Macau, Father Alessandro Valignano.
The Ruins of St. Paul's is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Historic Centre of Macao, about which I wrote here.
About the stamps
To the left and to the bottom are two ATM label World Heritage edition 2009 (reprint of the edition issued on July 31, 2008) available on both Klussendorf and Nalger machine.
The stamp with the hexagonal shape is part of the eighth series of I Ching, Pa Kua, issued on March 1st, 2012. Pa Kua (literally "eight symbols") are eight diagrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. Each consists of three lines, each line either "broken" or "unbroken," representing yin or yang, respectively. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as "trigrams" in English. The series consist of eight stamps with the same face value, 2.00 Patacas, designed by Chan Chi Vai:
• Pi / Redemption - It's on the postcard 0243
• Cui / Assembly - It’s on the postcard 0467
• Jin / Expansion
• Yu / Defence
• Cuan / Observation
• Bi / Association
• Bo / Shift
• Kun / Earth
References
Ruins of St. Paul's - Wikipedia
Sender: Kuan Long Lam (direct swap)
Sent from Macau (Macau / China), on 18.05.2012
Photo: Lio Kin Wa
Hello:) I really like this card,i don't have any cards from Macau yet :c i love this building and green area close to it :) UNESCO places are so beautiful! Greetings from Poland:) Marta
ReplyDeleteI just randomly googled my name and saw you blog! It's been exactly 5 years since I started postcrossing. These cards are among those that I first sent as a postcrosser. They remind me of those happy memories. I'm so impressed by your dedication to the details of the postcard and the stamps. Kuan
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the appreciations. I'm glad that my posts gave you pleasant memories. But should know that I didn't received the postcards from you by postcrossing, but by direct swap. If you want, we can swap again, in memory of old times. :)
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