Also See : In & Around Fort Cochin

"If China is where you make your money, then Cochin is surely the place to spend it."

Fort Cochin is believed to be the oldest European Settlement in India and St. Francis Church was the first European Church to be built in India. Fort Cochin probably has the best preserved history of colonial times and the ideal way to bring it alive is to take a walk down its old colonial roads, with its tree-lined avenues and quaint little lands, stretching upto the beach, where magnificent Chinese fishing nets sketch a spectacular skyline. 

Infact, Fort Kochi is a unique place in the whole of the world where you get to see a mosaic of the world culture, European architecture and the flora and fauna of different parts of the world. Rightly so, UNESCO has declared it as a living monument of world culture. The streets and ancient buildings in Fort Cochin, portrays a combination of different cultures, contributed from the Protugese, the British and the Dutch, who set their foot on this marvelous land, which is indeed the crown of the Queen of the Arabian Sea.

The History of Fort Cochin

A unique event in history when a major flood in AD 1341 threw open the estuary at Cochin, till then land locked, turning it into one of the finest natural harbours of the east and a perfect entrance way for the long line of seafaring visitors; the Arabs, the Chinese and others . Vasco Da Gama was the first European traveler to come to Cochin, Soon Trade relation was established between the Portuguese and the accommodative local rulers. The Dutch wrested Cochin from the Portuguese in AD 1663 and laid out most of the present town when they reduced the original fort to one third of its original size. During this period, Fort Cochin peaked in stature and its fame reached far and wide; variously as a rich commercial center, a major military base, a shimmering cultural hub, a great ship building yard, and a centre for Christianity and so on. The British took over the worn in 1795. In its diminished role as an administrative outpost of British India, the town was still the focal point mainly for the spices and tea trades. It was in this period that a distinct strain of Indo European architecture, as seen in many of the bungalows here evolved.