Malaysia — Malacca — River Fort, Malacca, Malaysia

A quick look at the River Fort

June 2015

Malacca, Malaysia, boasts some of Southeast Asia’s oldest surviving European architectural remains. One example is the A Famosa, built by the Portuguese when they ruled Malacca from 1511 to 1641.

Another example is down by the river and is a fort; however, all is not as it first appears.

As far as I could tell, the fort was a reconstruction of how the fort may have originally looked when built by the Portuguese and then altered by the Dutch.

The stone used to construct the fort were very odd. It was incredibly hard and, at the same time, looked fragile as it was full of holes.

Unless I missed it, I could not find any notes or information nearby that explained what I was looking at, and I was left to assume that the fort I could see was a reconstruction and the lower walls in the ground were the remains of the original fort.

All very confusing.