Macau — Overview
Macau's historic center was added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site list in 2005, underlining its strategic and cultural importance over centuries. The mixture of colonial Portuguese architecture sits beautifully alongside its East-Asian flair.
Attractions
Parts of Macau offer serenely traditional countryside, ancestral Chinese villages and pine-forested hills. Much of 'old' Macau is preserved on its islands, Taipa and Coloane, including fishing boat building yards, colonial mansions, Chinese temples and floating fisherfolk communities. Yet Macau is now famed for enticing visitors with its glitzy new Vegas-style casino resorts, both on the Macau peninsula and on the still under-construction Cotai Strip, a sliver of reclaimed land joining the islands of Taipa and Coloane.
Background
Macau was founded in 1557 during the great era of Portuguese overseas exploration. It became the major port between the Far East and Europe and, in 1670, was confirmed as a Portuguese possession by the Chinese. Macau went into decline as a regional trading center from the early 19th century, when the British occupied Hong Kong.
In 1999, Macau, like Hong Kong, became a 'Special Administrative Region' within China, operating under a ‘one country, two systems' policy, maintaining its own political, social and economic systems, and its own currency, the Pataca.
Geography
Macau is situated on a tiny peninsula at the mouth of the Pearl River. Three bridges of 2.5km (1.5 miles), 4.5km (2.8 miles) and 2.2km (1.375 miles) respectively link it to its nearest island, Taipa, which in turn is joined to the island of Côloane by the 2.2km (1.3-mile) Cotai Strip causeway. At the extreme northern end of the peninsula, on a narrow isthmus, is the imposing gateway (Portas do Cerco, or Border Gate), which leads to the Zhuhai and Zhongshan areas of the People's Republic of China. Some 60km (37 miles) to the east-northeast, across the mouth of the river, is Hong Kong. A 29km (18 mile) new bridge linking Macau, Zhuhai and Hong Kong is currently under discussion.
