St. Peter's Church, Malacca

St Peter's Church, Malacca (9 July, 2005)


St. Peter's Church (GPS: 2.20256, 102.2531) is a Catholic church in Malacca. It is located on Jalan Bendarahara in the city centre. The church was built by descendants of Portuguese soldiers in Malacca after the Dutch administrators relaxed the rules to allow the construction of a Catholic church. Its construction was made possible through the generosity of a Dutch convert who donated the land to the Portuguese as a gift. The bell within its bell tower dates back to 1608 and was manufactured in Goa, India.

Earlier, under Governor Bott, a zealous church man, all Portuguese Catholics in Malacca were ordered to give up their faith. A Jesuit traveller, Father premare, reported that the Dutch allowed all religions in Malacca except Roman Catholic, forcing many to perform their devotion in great secrecy.

When religious freedom was finally proclaimed in 1702, Malacca became a more tolerent place for other religions than it had been under the Portuguese. Today St. Peter's Church is the oldest Catholic church in Malaysia.

St Peter's Church is on the Map of Churches in Malacca

St Peter's Church is on the Map of Malacca

The clock tower of St Peter's Church (9 July, 2005)


Side view of St Peter's Church (9 July, 2005)


The presbytery of St Peter's Church (9 July, 2005)


Timothy Tye at St Peter's Church (9 July, 2005)

Discover Malacca; list of Churches in Malacca and Churches in Malaysia

 Latest updates on Penang Travel Tips

About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.