The name change hasn’t altered much of the feelings towards the building in my mind. Leal Senado is still what I am calling it even after its return to China for almost 10 years by now, though it has been given a more pragmatic title. This Senate’s House stands to prove the intricate relationship between the Chinese citizens and the colonial administration along the long line of history of the enclave. Besides this, it keeps marks of the mixed emotions between the Macanese and their homeland government before the Handover.
This pure Portuguese-style building is odorous of Southern European sentiments. You find yourself a vanishing point of changing perspectives as you walk through the arches, up and down the staircases, around the pillars, on the patios. Though I have been into this building for many times before, I’ve never paid much attention to its structure until today. It seems that my camera tells me to look more closely this time. With the Christmas decorations on, the interior looks brightly colorful on top of its Mediterranean plainness adorned with marble murals and Portuguese ceramic tiles on the lower part of the walls.
The backyard of the building earns its own credits with a typical composition of a small Western garden. Surrounded by windows and small balconies of the front building, the garden counter-balances the closeness with bushes, trees and daisies (or whatever flowers they might be) along with stone statues, fountains and wooden benches. The tranquility of the atmosphere is so dense in a way that you could almost visualize the canonized poet walking his famous sonnet, or the scholar aloud with his logic arguments.
Leal Senado rennovated
