Taipa Village
Two intact Portuguese streets, five hundred metres from the world's biggest casinos.
Duration
1 hr – 2 hrs
Best time
Late afternoon
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Taipa was a fishing island before the Cotai reclamation welded it to Coloane to build the casinos. The old village survived: two pedestrian streets of low houses in ochre and green, and a row of Portuguese colonial villas facing what used to be the sea.
Rua do Cunha, a hundred metres long, concentrates Macanese cooking — the Portuguese-Cantonese blend found nowhere else: pork with Bencaleng chilli, minchi, and the pastéis de nata Macau took from the Portuguese and exported across Asia. The Cotai towers rise at the end of the street.
Getting there
On Taipa island, five minutes on foot from the Cotai casinos. The casinos' free shuttles drop you there from the peninsula.
Rules on site
Rua do Cunha is jammed at weekends and on Chinese public holidays: you shuffle. The Portuguese house-museums close on Mondays.
