Old bird‘s-eye view plan of Goa (India)

1638

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 11.5 x 14.25 in (29 x 36 cm)
Sheet size: 12.5 x 15.75 in (32 x 40 cm)

A Rare Early-Eighteenth-Century Plan and Prospect of Goa, Capital of Portuguese India

This engraved plan and panoramic prospect of Goa, published by François Valentijn in his monumental Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, represents one of the most detailed early-eighteenth-century European visual documents of the former capital of Portuguese India. Combining a sweeping city prospect with a meticulously keyed urban plan, the composition exemplifies the hybrid cartographic and chorographic practices through which European audiences encountered Asian cities at the height of maritime empire.

The upper register presents a panoramic view of Goa aligned along the riverfront, with churches, convents, civic buildings, and fortifications rising prominently against a hilly hinterland. Below, the densely engraved plan maps the city’s street network, wards, waterways, and institutional precincts, keyed to an extensive cartouche identifying 43 individual buildings and sites. This unusually comprehensive legend transforms the map from a general city view into a precise documentary survey of colonial urban life.

The numbered key records a remarkable concentration of religious institutions—among them churches and convents dedicated to St Francis Xavier, St Dominic, St Augustine, St Anne, St Paul, St Thomas, St Peter, St Andrew, St Lawrence, St Lucy, St Madeleine, and St Claire—alongside the Jesuit establishments, the Bishop’s residence, and multiple monastic orders. This density visually confirms Goa’s contemporary reputation as the “Rome of the East”, underscoring the centrality of ecclesiastical power to the city’s identity and spatial organisation.

Equally significant is the inclusion of secular and commercial infrastructure. The legend identifies the Viceroy’s Palace and Prison, the Customs House (Alfândega), the Royal Hospital, markets both old and new, the Exchange, timber wharves, the Ribeira, and the Place du Palais, as well as spaces associated with trade, labour, and coercion, including the Ruelle des Esclaves. Together, these elements reveal Goa as a fully articulated imperial capital, where religious authority, governance, commerce, and maritime exchange were tightly interwoven.

Although Valentijn wrote from a Dutch perspective, the plan documents a city shaped fundamentally by Portuguese imperial priorities. By the time of publication, Goa’s political and commercial dominance had begun to wane, lending the image additional value as a record of the city at or near the end of its imperial zenith. The inclusion of temples, Christian institutions, mercantile facilities, and administrative buildings within a single keyed plan offers a rare, street-level insight into the layered realities of colonial urbanism in India.

Within the cartography of India, this work occupies a distinguished position. Unlike regional or continental maps, it provides a granular visualisation of an Indian city as understood, ordered, and administered by a European power. As such, the plan of Goa stands not merely as a topographical document but as a visual articulation of early modern imperial knowledge, religious ambition, and cross-cultural encounter in South Asia.

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