Among the best of Macau's gardens is cool and shady Lou Lim Ioc Garden, with huge shade trees, lotus ponds, bamboo groves, grottoes and a bridge with nine turns (to escape from evil spirits who can only move in straight lines). Local people use the park to practise t'ai chi or play traditional Chinese musical instruments.

Dating from 1627, this is Macau's oldest and most interesting temple. The likeness of Kun Iam, goddess of mercy, is in the main hall while the adjacent rooms honour her with a collection of pictures and scrolls. On a less religious note, the first treaty of trade and friendship between the US and China was signed in the temple's terraced gardens in 1844.

These days the incense-shrouded complex is thronged with fortune tellers and visitors.

The facade and majestic stairway are all that remain of the Ruinas de Igreja São Paulo, a Jesuit church built in the 17th century by Japanese refugees who fled anti-Christian persecution in Nagasaki. However, its wonderful statues, portals and engravings present a 'sermon in stone', which some consider to be the greatest monument to Christianity in Asia.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Macau in 1762, a military battalion was stationed here. In 1835, a fire destroyed everything except the screen-like facade, mosaic floor and 66-step approach you can see today. But even in ruins its grandiose scale is a stunning reminder of Macau's Portuguese past.

The site is all the more impressive when it's floodlit at night: squint upwards to spot some local flavour in the carving of a woman stamping on a seven-headed hydra.

There's a museum in the cathedral's former nave, with pride of place going to the highly prized piece of St Francis Xavier's arm bone and the tomb belonging to the cathedral's builder, Jesuit Father Alessandro Valignano.