Walk through Cochin town

Retrace Fort Kochi's colonial influences

Take a leisurely stroll with your guide through the by-lanes of Fort Kochi which bears a marked European influence from Cochin’s British and Dutch colonial era. Fort Kochi is distinguished by its long line of Chinese fishing nets, which according to local legend, were introduced on the Malabar Coast by the emissaries of Kubla Khan’s court. Then stroll down to where the St. Francis Church stands, originally built by the Portuguese as a Catholic Church it later became Protestant under the Dutch and then Anglican under the British, until it became a part of the Church of South India in the post-Independence era. The Church’s colonial past is evident even today; there are men who operate the church’s enormous punkha fans by pulling on their ropes by hand! Continue past the Durbar Hall, the Dutch cemetery, marking the deaths of Dutch traders far from their home soils and the Jewish synagogue, the one monument to the family of Jews in Cochin who can trace their origins to King Solomon.