page_title: Fontainhas (quarter)
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Fontainhas (quarter) / Features
caption_attribution_description: Amzing Blue House and the wishing well (dunno if it's actually called a wishing well). Fontainhas Goa.
context_page_description: Fontainhas is an old Latin Quarter in Panjim, capital city of the state of Goa, India. It maintains its Portuguese influence, particularly through its architecture, which includes narrow and picturesque winding streets like those found in many European cities, old villas and buildings with projecting balconies painted in the traditional tones of pale yellow, green, or blue, and roofs made of red coloured tiles. Fontainhas' heritage ambience represents the traditional Portuguese influence in the area.
context_section_description: The old houses built in the 18th and 19th centuries in the Portuguese architectural style remain in their original colourful elegance with roofs made of red tiles and houses painted in pale yellow, green or blue colours. The Fundacão Orienté, a Portuguese public organization involved in the task of restoration of heritage buildings in Goa is also located in this quarter of Panjim. Fonte Phoenix, a well from a natural spring at one of the quarter's houses, has been refurbished. Many art galleries, which also house exotic cafes, are located here.
  An evening in the Fontainhas reveals unmarried women sitting on the roofed gallery steps, wearing colourful flowery dresses, scanning newspapers, and chatting with their neighbours in Portuguese. Violinists play musical works of Heitor Villa-Lobos from their windows and cages of birds hang from the ornate balconies overlooking the small red-tiled city square. Another nostalgic scene is of old people dressed in well-pressed linen pants and wearing Homburg hats walking out of taverns and wobbling along the cobbled streets lined with rundown old Volkswagen Beetles. La douceur méditerranéenne (a Mediterranean mildness) can be sighted in the lanes.
  While most aristocrats' mansions have been destroyed to make way for modern buildings, some old houses of erstwhile rich Indo-Portuguese people are still found here. Windows and balconies of some of the houses face the back lanes of the Fontainhas.
  The houses and the lanes are kept very clean. During Portuguese rule, every urban resident was mandated by law to paint his house every year after the monsoons; this practice is still continued as a tradition.
  A popular theme walk in the Fontainhas focuses on the architectural elegance of the atmospheric heritage area.
caption: A heritage house in Fontainhas with a wishing well
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