Macau Travel Guide - Overview

Macau's historic centre 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.

Parts of Macau offer serenely traditional countryside, ancestral Chinese villages and pine-forested hills. Much of 'old' Macau is preserved on its islands, including fishing boat building yards, colonial mansions, Chinese temples and floating fisherfolk communities. Yet Macau also entices visitors with its glitzy casinos and motor races, making for a fascinatingly unique destination.

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 centre 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.