English
Fort
Reis Magos, Goa, India
Military Architecture
The Reis Magos Fort [named after the biblical Holy Magi Kings or Wise Men] stands on the north side of the Mandovi River Bar in front of the Campal neighbourhood area of the city of Panaji. The fort is built on a pre-Portuguese defence position and along with the Franciscan church of the same devotion was the epicentre of territorial occupation of the lands of Bardez during the second half of the 16th century. After the Aguada stronghold was built the Reis Magos fortification lost much of its strategic value. When Goa was conquered by the Portuguese a castle already stood at the mouth of the Mandovi River which had been ordered built by the Sultan of Bijapur, Adil Khan (1490-1510). This position was occupied in November 1510, not just to better control navigation on the Mandovi but also to establish a footing in the lands of Bardez. But definitive annexation of Bardez province was only achieved in 1543. In that context, and during the government of Viceroy Afonso de Noronha (1551-54), a new riverside fortification was built on the same site. From 1589 on the Reis Magos Fort was subject to various improvements. New bastions and a platform at shore level were built. It was visited at the time by the chief engineer for India, João Baptista Cairato, who was responsible for the design. It essentially com- prised two quadrangular bastions joined by a curtain wall to its parapets, with a convex inflection in the mid- dle. The construction work lasted until 1605, when the upper fortified area was completed. The latter encom- passed an approximately triangular fort with two pronounced bastions facing north and west, and a third vertex from which two couraça walls extended down the slope to the bastions by the water. The pow- der magazine and a barracks were also situated in this vertex. Despite these interventions the Reis Magos fort was eventually of little use for defending the Mandovi bar against incursions from Dutch vessels. This led to construction of the Aguada fortress in 1604. Later, in the early 18th century and on the initiative of Viceroy Caetano de Mello e Castro, a new tenaille battery was built. In 1741 the Aguada and Reis Magos forts resisted an incursion by Bhonsle forces from Kudal who had occupied most of the lands of Bardez and endangered the Estado da Índia capital. From 1844 to 1850 new repairs of the fortress were undertaken on the initiative of Governor José Ferreira Pestana.