English
Tower
Pallipuram [Palipurama/Paliporto], Kerala, India
Military Architecture
The hexagonal tower at Pallipuram, twenty-four kilometres north of Kochi, is generally considered to be one of the oldest European structures on Indian soil. The date of its construction, however, is still unknown, but its architectonic features point to interventions later than 1661, the year in which the Dutch took this defensive position. Called Paliporto by the Portuguese, the settlement located on the bar of the River Cranganor was the centre of conflict between the Raja of Kochi, supported by the Portuguese, and the Samorin of Kozhikode from the very beginning, as the two potentates struggled to control the trade of the pepper that flowed to the Malabar Coast from the Ghats. Captain Lopes Soares de Albergaria and his men anchored a large part of their naval force there following an attack on Kodungallor in 1504. An anchorage was built on the bar at Pallipuram in the middle of the 1530s and the captain, Simão Botelho, future comptroller of the Estado da Índia’s coffers, was charged with impeding the passage of Kozhikode’s parau vessels. This first defensive position was later replaced with a small fortification described by António Bocarro around 1635. It is the ruins of this construction that can be seen at Pallipuram today, although Pedro Dias thinks that the Dutch carried out an intervention after 1661. Three storeys high, the tower has three square openings, one above the other, on each side, while there is a basement and a cistern under the ground floor. It is constructed in whitewashed laterite. In the centre of the ground floor is the base of a column that supported the upper floors and the roof.