English
Archbishop’s Palace
Panaji [Panagi/Pangim/Panjim/Nova Goa], Goa, India
Housing
Originally envisaged to be next to the Linhares Causeway, for which a first proposal was drawn up, the Archbishop’s Palace ended up being built in the recent neighbourhood of Conceição, now known as Altinho. The new project was drawn up by the Public Works Department’s director, José D’Assa Castel-Branco. The plan was approved in 1887 and in financial year 1888- 89 90,000 rupees were earmarked for construction of the building, distributed in that year and the two following financial years. The work was tendered in July 1889, a process that had to be repeated several times due to a lack of interested parties. It was finally awarded to José Caetano Jorge. Construction of the palace and attached chapel began on 8 September 1890; the main building was blessed on 14 September 1894 and the chapel shortly afterwards in January 1895. But in 1903-04 funds were still being budgeted for work associated to construction of the new palace. The L-shaped building has two floors. The chapel occupies both floors and is located on the north side. Access to the second floor is via the central area, mainly composed of common areas around a central corridor. The large reception hall stands out; it accesses the chapel’s high choir. The classically-inspired main façade has three rusticated bodies on the ground floor, topped by triangular pediments that jut slightly outwards from the façade surface. The two intermediate wall panels have iron verandas accessed via the second floor rooms. Although this façade seems symmetrical regarding the main entrance, the chapel actually has a second entrance, meaning that this symmetry is not real. The building is otherwise not symmetrical in volume. The side façades are marked by a rhythmic series of openings which on the second floor are full-length windows. The palace has undergone various changes. The first one known dates to 1913-14, when ten iron columns were introduced to support the verandas that then had structural problems. This did not significantly change the building’s appearance. The veranda area was transformed again later when a concrete structure was built. The exact date of this change is not known, though it was presumably in 1952 during commemorations of the fourth centenary of the death of Saint Francis Xavier. The balustrade topped by sculptural elements composing the fascia was probably removed at that time; the full-length windows on the main façade’s three most advanced volumes were also transformed. The use of doors from Old Goa in the two main façade entrances (main entrance and chapel entrance) can be conjectured here, as happened in other buildings. Next to the palace a Via Sacra was built on the hill in 1897. Ten years later the monument to Christ the redeemer was raised in front of the edifice. The building of the Archbishop’s Palace in Altinho, an ecclesiastical construction, ended up marking the transition to a new phase in the city of New Goa, initiating the construction of new urban expansion areas. Its site location and the fact that it was the first building put up in this neighbourhood clearly show the power the Church still wielded in Goa. It was also not by chance that the options for handling the main façade, with three projecting bodies joined by a veranda, are analogous to those of the Government Palace.