Goa's Latin Quarter
Fontainhas
A small quarter of Panaji where Portuguese-era houses are painted yellow, blue and red with white trim.
Why Fontainhas is ochre yellow
Fontainhas is the old Latin Quarter of Panaji, the capital of Goa, which Portugal ruled until 1961. It was laid out in the late 18th and 19th centuries at the foot of a hill, beside a creek. The narrow lanes are lined with houses that have tiled roofs, overhanging balconies and windows that once held panes of oyster shell. Walls are painted ochre yellow, deep blue, green or oxide red, with white picking out the edges. It is often said that under Portuguese rule houses had to be repainted after each monsoon and that plain white was kept for churches. Hand-painted tile nameplates mark many doors. The white chapel of St Sebastian stands in the middle.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Fontainhas
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Fontainhas (quarter)" on Wikipedia. If you know Fontainhas and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Jodhpur In: Lavpatel2008, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Jaipur In: Chainwit., CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Udaipur In: Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Jaisalmer In: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, source
- Varanasi In: Marcin Białek, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Vrindavan In: Biswarup Ganguly, CC BY 3.0, source