VIDEO SUMMARY:

• The enormous tombstones inside St. Paul’s Church weren’t originally displayed against the walls—they once covered graves in the floor of the church.
• A closer look at the inscriptions reveals a surprisingly intimate picture of life in colonial Melaka: Dutch merchants, Portuguese officials, ship captains, military men, women who died in childbirth, and an extraordinary number of children who died very young.
• The year 1641 becomes a useful key for reading the cemetery, marking the Dutch conquest of Melaka and the transition from Portuguese to Dutch rule.
• The church itself has had several lives: Catholic church, Dutch church, graveyard, military position, gunpowder store—and eventually the atmospheric ruin we see today.

The Tombstones Aren’t Where They Started

One of the first things that strikes you at St. Paul’s Church is the sheer size of the tombstones. They’re massive slabs of stone, beautifully carved and sometimes surprisingly thick.

But there’s an important detail that’s easy to miss: they weren’t originally standing against the walls.

They were originally laid flat on the floor, directly over the graves of the people buried beneath them. During restoration work in the 1920s and 1930s, the stones were lifted from the floor and placed against the walls to protect them from weather, foot traffic and further deterioration.

That completely changes the way I look at the church.

Instead of a room decorated with old gravestones, you’re looking at what was once a functioning burial ground inside a church.

And one of the most fascinating pieces of evidence is a sketch from 1900 showing where the stones were actually located before they were moved. It even shows four large tombstones outside the church doorway—something you would never know from looking at the church today.

A Cemetery Becomes a Window Into Colonial Melaka

The really interesting part begins when you stop looking at the stones as monuments and start reading them as records of individual lives.

There are Dutch names everywhere, along with Portuguese burials from the earlier period and later British-era examples. The inscriptions tell you who these people were, where they came from, what they did, and when they died.

And then another pattern starts to emerge.

They were often remarkably young.

There are adults who died in their twenties and thirties, women who died in childbirth, ship captains who died in their thirties, and children who lived for only a few years—or even a single day.

One stone commemorates a two-year-old child and his one-year-old sister. Another belongs to a nine-year-old boy. And one particularly heartbreaking inscription describes a baby whose life apparently began and ended on the same day.

The stones don’t need much interpretation to make their point. You can simply read them and begin to imagine the lives behind the names.

Why 1641 Is Such a Useful Date

If you’re trying to understand these graves, one date helps put everything into context: 1641.

That was the year the Dutch defeated the Portuguese and took control of Melaka.

So when you encounter someone who died in 1635, you’re looking at a person who lived and died during Portuguese rule. Someone who died in 1646 lived into the early years of Dutch control.

Suddenly the dates on the tombstones become more than dates. They become little markers on the larger history of Melaka.

There are even tombstones belonging to people whose lives span that transition, while some burial sites were subsequently reused, meaning that a single grave marker can sometimes represent more than one person from different periods.

The history of Melaka isn’t just something written on museum signs. Sometimes it’s literally carved into the floor beneath your feet.

The Skull and Crossbones Aren’t About Pirates

One of my favorite discoveries was something I initially misunderstood.

Several of the tombstones feature a skull and crossbones. My first thought was the obvious one: pirates.

But that’s not what these symbols meant in this context.

The skull and crossbones represent memento mori—a reminder that we are mortal and that death eventually comes for everyone. Nearby, an hourglass represents tempus fugit, the idea that time flies.

The imagery is essentially a medieval and early-modern meditation on mortality:

Remember that you must die. Time is passing. Your life is temporary.

And the wings incorporated into the design can be understood as another reference to the passage of time—or, in another interpretation, the soul’s journey after death.

It’s a very different meaning from the pirate symbolism that immediately comes to mind today.

The Mysterious Burial Vault

Then there’s the strange little gated structure in the back of the church.

There isn’t much signage explaining it, but beneath the grate is a deep underground burial vault. Today it has acquired a rather unexpected second life as a sort of wishing well, with visitors dropping coins through the openings.

But the vault is also associated with one of Melaka’s most famous historical figures: St. Francis Xavier.

The traditional story is that Xavier’s body was temporarily interred in Melaka for nine months before being moved on to Goa. But while researching the story, I found a problem with the chronology of the vault itself—the dates don’t seem to line up neatly with the story.

So this is one of those cases where the famous story is fascinating, but the evidence deserves a little caution.

What isn’t in doubt is the Jesuit connection. The IHS symbol and cross on the structure are associated with the Society of Jesus, and St. Francis Xavier was deeply connected with Melaka and used the city as a base for his missionary journeys.

That uncertainty actually makes the story more interesting to me, rather than less.

St. Paul’s Church Has Had Many Lives

It’s easy to think of St. Paul’s as simply an old Portuguese church sitting in ruins on top of the hill.

But its history is considerably more complicated.

The original church was built by the Portuguese. The Dutch later took it over and called it St. Paul’s Church. Then, in 1753, the Dutch completed the new church in what is now Dutch Square—today’s Christ Church—and moved the name and main Dutch worship function down into the square.

After that, the building on the hill increasingly became a cemetery and military site.

And then the British found another use for it: gunpowder storage.

At first that sounds bizarre. Why put gunpowder at the top of a hill?

But the thick laterite walls, ventilation, relative dryness and isolated position suddenly make the decision much easier to understand. If something went wrong, those massive walls could help direct an explosion upward rather than into the town below.

So the building has gone from Catholic church to Dutch church to cemetery to military installation to gunpowder storehouse—and finally to historic ruin.

Look Down, Not Just Up

One of the things I like about visiting places like this is that the most interesting information isn’t always presented to you.

The church has relatively little signage, but there are some excellent resources if you take the time to look. The tombstones have translations beside them, and an exterior information panel contains maps showing where the stones are today and where they were located in 1900.

There’s even a photograph from Robert Norman Bland’s 1905 book showing some of the tombstones still lying on the ground.

That kind of evidence lets you reconstruct the church in your imagination.

You can stand in the ruins today and essentially look backward in time: first at the stones against the walls, then at the 1900 diagram, then further back to the Portuguese and Dutch people whose graves those stones originally marked.

The Human Story Beneath the History

For me, though, the most powerful discovery wasn’t a famous name or an architectural detail.

It was the sheer number of children.

One family memorial records Isabella, who lived nine months; Robert, two months; Edward, three years; Louisa Augusta, four years; and Frederick Theodore, just over a year. The inscription was erected with love and affection by their father and grandfather.

You can read about colonial administrations, wars, fortresses and empires, but then you come across something like that and the history becomes intensely personal.

These weren’t just “the Dutch” or “the Portuguese.”

They were fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and children.

And their lives—often remarkably short—are still sitting here in stone.

“The history of Melaka isn’t just something written on museum signs. Sometimes it’s literally carved into the floor beneath your feet.”

“We’re not looking at the skull and crossbones of a pirate. We’re looking at symbols for the mortality of man and how life is fleeting.”

One More Reason to Visit St. Paul’s

I’ve been up to St. Paul’s Hill many times since arriving in Melaka. It’s an easy route through the city, and the hill provides a nice break from the streets below.

But this time I slowed down and looked at something I’d mostly walked past before.

That’s the funny thing about historic places. You can visit the same location over and over and still discover something completely new simply by asking a different question.

This time, the question was: Who are all these people whose enormous tombstones are leaning against the walls?

The answer turned out to be a surprisingly detailed story about colonial Melaka, religious change, warfare, disease, family tragedy, mortality, and the changing purpose of one of the city’s most familiar landmarks.

And there’s still plenty I haven’t figured out.

If you’ve visited St. Paul’s Church—or if you’ve come across an old cemetery where the stones suddenly made you stop and think—I’d love to hear what you noticed.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to Planet Doug and welcome to the historic city of Melaka in Malaysia. And I’m currently standing inside the ruins of St. Paul’s Church up on top of Bukit Melaka, which in the past was also called St. Paul’s Hill. So, one of the most impressive features of St. Paul’s Church, of course, are all of the huge tombstones that you see lined up along the side of the wall. So, you can see them here. And with these people in the foreground, you get a sense of the scale of them, just how large they are, how ornate, and in particular, how thick they are. So, if you look at them from the side, you can see they’re as big as my hand. Huge, heavy pieces of stone. And each one of these is a tombstone, a gravestone for someone who was buried here. So, that is certainly one of the main things that jumps out at you about St. Paul’s Church. There are a number of them arrayed here in the main nave. These seem to be the biggest and the most clear, the ones that were best preserved. And then as you go into the back, there are some more here. These ones are a bit older, more worn. As you can see from a distance, another set over here. And then in this room, there’s a bunch more leaning against the wall here.

Two of them over there and then some more over there. Perhaps the key thing to understand about these tombstones and to understand the church as a whole is that all of these were originally lying flat on the ground. So all of these tombstones that you see leaning against the wall, back in the 20s and 30s, the Historical Society of Melaka started renovating and recovering these ruins. And part of that process, they lifted all of these tombstones off the ground and then lean them against the wall. And of course that was to keep them safe, to keep them preserved so that tourists like me were not walking on them, wearing them down and they’re no longer exposed to the weather.

And that means of course that historically people were buried under the ground here. So when this was a functioning church, people of note, people who had the means of course were important enough to be buried here, their bodies were placed underground underneath the church floor and then these massive tombstones were laid on top of them. So, as far as I understand things, the bodies of the people that were buried here, they’re still here all underground. It’s just that their markings, their tombstones have been lifted up and then pressed against the wall and held there to preserve them. There’s a sign outside the church that I think a lot of people glance at and then just skip it because it looks too detailed, too much information to absorb, especially when you’re standing out here in the hot sun of Melaka. But to really understand what you’re looking at in there, it would be worthwhile to take some time to absorb the information that you see here on this sign. One interesting thing is they have a couple of QR codes here. So, this one will take you to a set of 360 video clips. So, you can walk around inside St. Paul’s Hill. Just scan that code on the left and then this one will give you a virtual tour inside the Stadthuys. I tested them both and they work pretty well. So, it’s kind of cool. If you can’t come here yourself, you can do a virtual tour using those QR codes. And then they have a map here, a diagram of the interior of the church. And this shows you exactly where the tombstones are located today, like where they are leaning against the wall. And each one is labeled, you know, S1, S2, S3. And then they have a glossary down here. So you can see the names of the people buried there. Well, not buried exactly there, but the tombstone for this person S1 Jane Charlotte born 1806 or Jane Charlotte Westerhout born 1806 died 1841 etc. So these all match with the numbering scheme here. So you can see where all of the tombstones are leaning against the wall. But even more interesting is this smaller diagram down here.

And this one is a sketch that was done in the year 1900. So these tombstones were raised up and leaning against the wall in the 20s and 30s. So back in 1900, they were still lying on the floor right here in their original positions. So, this sketch shows you exactly where all of these tombstones used to be. And interestingly, I never noticed this before. There were actually four large ones outside the church itself, outside the door. And you can see four of them were lined up here. And you can see how they were arranged on the inside. So, it’s really fascinating to take some time to examine this, understand that the tombstones were all lying on the ground like this. And then in the 20s and 30s, the interior of the church, they dug it out, they excavated it, and to preserve all of these tombstones, then they moved them into these locations leaning against the wall. While I was doing a bit of research into this topic, I came across this amazing photograph. And this shows Robert Norman Bland taking photographs of the tombstones. And he published all of his photographs in a book back in 1905. The title of the book is Historical Tombstones of Melaka mostly of Portuguese origin by Robert Norman Bland, London 1905. And what I love about this photograph is it is the only one I’ve been able to find that shows at least some of the tombstones actually on the ground in their original position. I always keep thinking that it would make so much sense for somebody to have taken a picture of the full interior of the church, just get up on a ladder like this and take a picture of the whole floor showing all of the tombstones exactly where they were located. But as far as I can tell, a photograph like that doesn’t exist. And this is the only one that seems to be readily available on the internet. And it does show a few of the tombstones. And that gives you an idea of what it would have looked like before these tombstones were raised off the ground and then leaned against the wall to preserve them. Going back inside the church itself, I’ve opened up a photograph of that diagram which is quite interesting to do because then you can walk around the floor of the church and you can actually see at least in the year 1900 where all of these tombstones were located exactly. And as I said, four of them were actually outside the church itself, right outside this doorway. You can see it’s quite a wide doorway. And according to this diagram, there were four of these large tombstones were right out here, all lined up, one beside each other. So, four people were buried here with their tombstones on top of them. I don’t know which four. You could do some calculating and comparing one map to the other and figure out which of these four were actually located outside that doorway, but I haven’t gone that far with my investigations. This church really doesn’t have a lot of signage, so there’s very little information about its history, so you kind of have to do all of your own research. But one place where they did a really nice job was in putting translations of each stone here, right beside it. So, of course, the writing on the stone itself, it’s going to be in a language you don’t understand, and it’s very, very worn sometimes and hard to read, but they give you a English translation here. So, you can see exactly the name of the person, who they were, where they were from, and then details about their life and death. And they’re very easy to read, very clear. They did a really nice job with that. I just realized that this one is marked S1 on the map out there and I was reading the name of Jane Charlotte Westerhout. And yeah, it might be quite unusual. This one says this is to the memory of Mrs. Jane Charlotte Westerhout born on the 20th September 1806 and departed this life on the 19th January 1841. So she was 34 years 3 months 29 days old. And I say it’s unusual because this was under the British control of Melaka. And I think the vast majority of the tombs here are from the Dutch in the 1600s. That may be the only tombstone from the British era of Melaka. I’m not sure. But I’ve gone through here and I’ve read the inscription on every single tombstone. And as I said, the vast majority are Dutch from the 1600s, a smattering of Portuguese from earlier than that, and then the one British one there. And when you read all of the tombstones, you definitely pick up on patterns. The one pattern I already mentioned that most of them are Dutch, but there’s also kind of a very sad pattern of how young these people were when they died. The adults died very young in their 30s that seemed to be very common and there were a lot of tombs dedicated to children 1 years old 3 years old things like that so it’s really quite something to see just how young everyone was when they died here the tropics were not very kind to the people from Europe in those days.

And the tombstones arrayed along this side of the church really drive home that point. You can see the size of this one here. This tombstone, it’s one of the rare ones that actually broke in half. I don’t know whether it was broken when they raised it or it happened while they were moving it. Most of them are in excellent condition. I thought they would all kind of fall apart, but this one was broken in half. But you can see it is a tombstone of Theodoris Herbers, 9 years old, passed away in 1659, just 9 years old. And a tombstone of that size and scale, it’s really quite something. And this one over here, I believe, also was someone who died relatively young. Born 1674, died 1709. So yeah, 35 years old and she died in childbirth. So can you imagine being here kind of a hard life I imagine 35 years old and dies in child birth and her memory is kept here in this tombstone. And then moving on to this one. I think this was another quite a tragic set of deaths I think or just one.

Born in 1619 died 1650 31 years old. And it also comes across to me that at least those days people attained greater achievements earlier than we do now. So even though he was only 31 years old, he was the chief merchant and head of the Netherlands factory. So they tend to live a rich full life much earlier than we do, I think. But yeah, he died 31 years old.

And the second to last one here, I think this is the burial site of two children.

Daniel Massesus, born 1658, died 1660. So 2 years old. Sophia Masses, his sister, one year old. So a 2-year-old and a one-year-old child.

And this is their gravestone.

That’s just a sampling of the young ages that people passed away back in those days. And you see that same pattern with all the tombstones in here. And also there are grave sites on the outside as well. There’s a cemetery down here. And if you read all of the tombstones, you get a very interesting picture of their lives.

The back part of the church here, I think they call it the chancel, is a little bit different because it still has an intact roof. Feels a little bit cooler back here. And they also have some very interesting tombstones that I’ll talk about in a minute. But what I wanted to point out was this cage right here. And it’s quite interesting. It might be one of the most important features of the church, but as I may have already pointed out, they are not very good here with signage. So has not a single sign anywhere telling you what this is. But in fact, it is an underground burial vault. And it’s a little bit hard to look through because of the gate. But if you look through here, one of the holes, you can see through another grate, it’s actually a very deep, quite large underground burial vault. I pressed my GoPro as close as I can to one of these holes in the grating. And maybe you can see the burial vault down below. These days, it tends to be used as a wishing well. So they even have the slots here where people drop money, coins mainly into the vault below as a wishing well. But it has an even more interesting history than that because I don’t know whether it’s actually true or not. There’s a lot of debate about this, but it’s generally understood that this was the burial site of St. Francis Xavier but only for 9 months. St. Francis died off the coast of China I believe and he was buried near there for a while and then his body was moved here to Melaka and then St. Francis was buried kind of interred here for 9 months and then his body was then moved I believe to Goa in India. But the story is that St. Francis Xavier his body was buried here for 9 months and I say there’s some debate about that because when I was looking at the dates I found the date for when this burial vault was dug like when it was built and it was actually according to the dates I saw it was built after St. Francis Xavier’s body was here. The timing just doesn’t work out but the story works very well because St. Francis Xavier was such an important figure and this is the largest burial vault so they just make the connection that his body was buried here and I mentioned that despite this possible connection with St. Francis. There isn’t a single sign here telling anybody that. So, most visitors really don’t know what this burial vault represents. But it does have on the front this symbol. And you can see the IHS with a cross. And it looks like the English letters IHS, but those are actually originally they were Greek letters. And they kind of look like IHS, but they were the first letters of Jesus’s name. And we find it here because the letters IHS and the cross, it’s actually the official seal and emblem of the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus. So that is a connection to St. Francis.

This is one of my favorite tombstones here just because it has a ship carved onto it and that’s a bit unusual. I haven’t seen one like that before.

And one way to look at all these tombstones is think about the year 1641. I say that because 1641 is a key year. That’s the year the Dutch defeated the Portuguese and they took over Melaka. So when you look at all of the tombstones and you’re trying to figure out is this a Dutch person, Portuguese, you can tell by the name, but if the date of their death is after 1641, they died during Dutch control of Melaka. But if the date is before 1641, then it’s a good chance that they were Portuguese because that was when Melaka was under Portuguese control. And you can sort of understand their lives a little bit better by focusing on that 1641 date. I’ve seen a lot of people here who died for example in like 1639 something like that. So they would have died two years before the Dutch forces overwhelmed the Portuguese and took over. You see what I mean? Or someone who died in 1643. That would be 2 years after the Dutch conquest. So that gives you a picture of their lives when they might have come here, what they might have lived through at that time. This might be a good example of what I was talking about. I think these tombstones were grouped together because they are from Portuguese people who were buried here. And when you look at the writing on the tombstone, the name looks Portuguese, right? Francesco Gonzalez and died in 1568. And 1568 is long before 1641. So this was right in the heart of Portuguese control. So the date here died 1598. So again, we’re back in the Portuguese era. Anything before 1641.

And another one over here. This one is interesting. Died December 27th, 1635. So that is 6 years before the Dutch defeated the Portuguese and took control of Melaka. So this man, commander of the Order of St. James, general of the Fortress of India, general of the sea and land. Sounds like he was an important person in the military, but he died before the big battle with the Dutch and the loss of Melaka. Yeah, sometimes it gets a bit confusing because this marker is for two people. One died in 1673, which would have been the Dutch era, and the other in 1604, which was still in the Portuguese era. Andre Fernandez. And that kind of makes sense because a lot of these grave sites were reused because there was a limited space and over the centuries they would open up one of the grave sites, lift up the tombstone, put another body inside, and then put the gravestone back in place. And they did that in particular with these large vaults. So many of the important people the Jesuits themselves would be buried here but there many would be buried here together and they would just open the gate, lower a new body and enclose it again. So you do find graves that have multiple people in the same place.

Here’s another set of tombstones that is quite interesting. So this is where Hrik Everson was buried and looks to be a Dutch name and he died 1698. So that was clearly in the Dutch era. This one is quite interesting. Valyriius Van Gesteran born 1614 and died 1646 and 1646 is like 5 years after the Dutch conquest of Melaka. So it’s quite likely that he was involved in the fighting. It’s possible that he was involved in the battle with the Portuguese and then they defeated the Portuguese. The Dutch took over and then he lived here until his death 5 years later in 1646.

Arnold Van Olen and he passed away in 1697 well into the Dutch era. I find this tombstone for Hrik quite interesting because of the symbolism on it as well. I’ve seen this skull and crossbone symbol around Melaka in various places and it kind of surprised me because I associate that with pirates and I thought wo you know was this guy a pirate? But I did some reading about it and I learned that it has nothing to do with pirates at that time. The skull and crossbones that you see there is actually a symbol for the Latin memento mori which means remember that you must die. So it is a reminder that all life is temporary and our time on this earth is limited and we will all we are all mortal and then above it is an hourglass and the hourglass stands for the Latin phrase I don’t know if I can pronounce it properly tempus fugit meaning time flies. So, not only do you have to remember that you are mortal and you will die eventually, the hourglass reminds you that your time is short. Time flies and your life is very short and it will be over quite quickly. Pulling back, we get the wings. And I get two different definitions for that. Some people say it’s another symbol for time flying, right? Time moves quickly. So life is short. But it is also interpreted as meaning you after you die, you fly up to heaven to move on to your next life in the afterlife. So yeah, that was quite fascinating for me. We are not looking at the skull and crossbones of a pirate. We’re looking at symbols for Latin about the mortality of man and how life is fleeting.

These two tombstones jumped out at me as well. Quite interesting and to me quite significant. This one again you can see the skull and crossbones there again. And this is for George Cook, formerly the captain of a Dutch vessel, renowned for his trustworthiness and endowed with knowledge. He died on his way back from China on 16th of September in 1712 and he was only 36 years old. So like can you imagine he was the captain of a ship going back and forth from China, a Dutch captain of a ship and he died at the age of 36. A very different way of life back then. And this taller one beside that is Francis Barber, the wife of Captain James Barber, and she died in 1695. And she died in childbirth.

It doesn’t say how old she was, but again, it just seems like such a sad story to be, you know, on the far side of the world from your home. And she died giving birth.

A final set of tombstones from inside the church. This is the last room and they definitely keep the same theme going where this one is for David Wall Ravens. I believe that’s a Dutch name and he was only 21 years old and he died in 1645 just a few years after the Dutch conquest of Melaka. So he may have been involved in the military assault on Melaka and yeah only lived a couple of years after that dying in 1645.

Another Dutch name right beside him passed away in 1644 and that was just a 3 years after the Dutch took control of Melaka.

Beside him, wife of David Verdon, 29 years old, passed away February 1652.

Passed away in 1644. A lot of people died in the first three, four, five years after the Dutch conquest of Melaka. And here, the last one for my tour might be the saddest one of all. This tall, thin one here. And it looks like this child lived for one day. Here lies the mother’s joy and father’s first offshoot which on the same day had beginning and end. So one day old. It doesn’t give the date though for that final stone.

And there are some windows in the back part of the church here which you shouldn’t miss. Gives a nice view towards A Famosa, which you can’t really see. Oh, yes, you can. Look at that. So, there’s A Famosa down there, the Porta de Santiago, the last remaining gate of the fortress that used to go all the way around the hill. And over there is the Sultanate Palace, the recreation of the original Sultanate Palace, which also used to sit on the slopes of this hill. And as you can see, there are grave sites around the hillside. A bunch in that direction and then here as well. Then going around to that side. And I noticed this one down here. I’ll walk down there just for a minute to show you the writing on this gravestone down there. Wow. You really feel the heat. It’s really nice. That back room there, that’s the one part of the church still has an intact roof. And the temperature in there is much much cooler than the other part of the church that’s exposed. And then when you step outside, woof woof, there it is. You get hit by the heat, you really feel it. But you get an interesting view of the church from back here because you see the height of the wall, just stacks of laterite bricks. And you can see just how high it goes. And I’m looking at the back wall here. And when you walk along here, you start to feel like you might be in some danger because you’re wondering how in the world that steep high wall is holding up there. You know, how it feels like it’s about to fall over. Like there isn’t enough structural elements in there holding it together. But I guess it’s such a thick wall here inside the window. You can see just how thick it is. That’s why it’s still standing. Doesn’t have any metal I beams or rebar or anything like that, but it is so thick that it is quite stable. But the tombstone that I wanted to point out is down here.

There’s St. Paul’s Church and right below it, this tombstone. And the reason it jumped out at me was there were so many young children from the same family who all died so young and were all buried here together. Either the Velgie or Velgie family or the Evans. Isabella, aged 9 months and 6 days. Robert Evans, 2 months and 19 days. Anna Maria Evans, 24 years. Edward Evans, 3 years, 5 months. Louisa Augusta Evans, 4 years, 9 months. Finally, Frederick Theodore Velgi, 1 year, 4 months, 8 days. And it says that this tablet was erected as if with love and affection from their father and grandfather. So these were all his children and grandchildren who all passed away and were buried together. But it just seems incredible that so many children in the same family would pass away at such a young age. And you see that story played out time and again in the tombstones inside the church and then all the ones that are arrayed outside.

And a secret that few people know is that when you come out of the back of St. Paul’s Church. And you see this these graves lined up alongside the hill. There is a pathway here, a walkway with a wooden fence and a metal fence on each side. And if you follow this secret pathway, it actually brings you down to another cemetery, which I believe on Google Maps is called the Dutch Cemetery down here.

Right now the gate appears to be locked at the bottom, but sometimes that gate is open and then you can go out onto the street, go around and you can visit the Dutch Cemetery out here.

And I noticed that over here is an abandoned building, which is always something interesting to stumble across. Apparently a art gallery or maybe that could be graffiti. Somebody just put that on there as a joke. But yeah, there’s a broken doorway here that allows you to go inside this abandoned building.

Some more modern history, I guess. Yeah, some tagging and graffiti on the walls.

And I think this leads to the grounds of a like museum corporation back here. Sort of an administrative building for people running the various museums. I think back in here actually I’m not sure what this is. Yeah. Looks like it was a self-contained building, but it’s all abandoned and empty now. Yeah. Looks like there’s a second floor up there. A lot of empty rooms.

Hm. It’s probably a popular party spot maybe where the local kids come here, hang out at night, have a cold drink or two.

Yeah. You don’t get any more abandoned than this.

My time here at St. Paul’s Church winding down. Time to head down the stairs back into Melaka, find myself a cold drink. I’ve been up here lots of times. In fact, I came here when I first arrived in Melaka. And then as I walk around the city visiting other places, it’s always convenient to walk over the hill and then down the other side again. So, I’ve been up here at St. Paul’s quite a few times. Yeah, it’s got a great atmosphere. You can get a nice cool breeze up here. So today I just thought I would take a closer look at the tombstones and their history. So I hope you found that interesting. And one other aspect of this church that it helps to understand to really appreciate it is its connection to Christ Church. Like everyone who comes to Melaka as a tourist, I’m sure you go to Dutch Square and you see Christ Church, Melaka there in Dutch Square. You probably went inside to take a look and you probably came up here to St. Paul’s Church. But it’s helpful to know that those two churches are connected. So this main building here, this church was built by the Portuguese and then the Dutch of course took over and they named it St. Paul’s Church. But then in 1753 the Dutch completed construction on a new church down in the square, the one that is now called Christ Church. So that new church that they built down there in 1753, they called it St. Paul’s Church. They deconsecrated this church and moved the name down there and basically made that the center of worship for the Dutch community. And St. Paul’s up here on the hill was basically used from that point on as a mainly as a graveyard and then almost as a military site for both the Dutch and the British. Interesting factoid, something that I read is that the British turned St. Paul’s Church into a gunpowder storage place basically. And that seemed really odd to me at first. I was like, why in the world would you put all your gunpowder way up here at the top of the hill? But I did some reading about it and the idea is it’s not as humid up here as it is down below. Even a little bit of altitude makes a big difference. So the gunpowder keeps longer. It doesn’t clump up and become moist. It’s breezier up here. Again, keeps the gunpowder in better condition, cooler temperatures, and it’s safer because if you store all your gunpowder right in the middle of town, there’s an explosion, it blows up your town and you have to create a very strong gunpowder storage room to contain it. But here in St. Paul’s, they had readymade walls, very, very thick laterite walls. So they store their gunpowder here and if there was an accident and an explosion the walls would force the explosion upward rather than outward and creating damage and causing fatalities. So in fact it made a lot of sense to store gunpowder up here and to use it as a yeah defensive position.

And continuing with the connection with Christ Church down in the square, some of the tombstones here that were on the ground, they were raised up here and then brought down to the Christ Church, the new St. Paul’s Church, in the square. So, if you go inside St. Paul’s Church, now called Christ Church. Look at the floor down there and you will see tombstones like these and you’ll see them on the floor of Christ Church down in Dutch Square. And they originally came from up here and they were moved down to the square to the new church to preserve them.

Yeah, I could really feel the heat. The big difference between even though that main part of the church has no roof, being inside there is a lot cooler than even stepping outside here to the outside the church walls itself makes a big difference. Yeah. This white building, by the way, this tower that was built by the British and was a lighthouse. So, they built a lighthouse up here up on the hill. And of course, we have the statue here of St. Francis Xavier. Oddly enough, again, there’s no sign here. So, a lot of people go right by this statue and they have no idea who this is because there is no sign of any kind, not a placard telling them that this is St. Francis Xavier. So they don’t know how deeply he is connected to this church because yeah he was part of the original chapel that was here and a founder of the Jesuits and St. Francis used Melaka as a base for a lot of his missionary work. He was based here and then his missionary expeditions to Japan to China places like that he would leave from here go on his missions and then return to Melaka. So St. Francis is deeply tied to Melaka which is why you see his name in so many different places. All right, one last look behind me at St. Paul’s Church. I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did. Gave me a chance to take a lot of the knowledge that I’ve pumped into my head and think about it deeply one last time for a trip up here to St. Paul’s. So, shout out to the Planet Doug Crunch Club. All of you who watched the video all the way to the end, put CC in the comments to let me know. And shout out to everyone supporting Planet Doug Video Productions, whether through Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, all the members of the Planet Doug Patreon. Love you guys hanging in there with me. I appreciate it every day. And the members of the Planet Doug coffee posi supporting my work through the buy me a coffee platform. And of course, as always, there’s a link to the Planet Doug PayPal in the video description. All your support is deeply appreciated. So, that is it. Shutting down for today. See you in the next video.