Saint Thomas the Apostle first brought Christianity here to India in the first century. He was martyred here, on a hill south of city center, near the present airport.
There are four extant apostolic tombs: Rome for Peter and Paul, Santiago de Compostelle for James the Greater, and Madras for Thomas. Now I've been to them all.
The Portuguese built a church here in the 16th Century. This is it, rather like a large parish church, but called a basilica:
There is a grotto, styled after Lourdes, outside:
The church seen from said grotto:
Seen from across the very busy city street:
As I say, the church is downtown, near the center, on the beach. The site of the martyrdom, with the extant relics (it seems that the rest of the body was spirited away to Europe) is on a hill in the southern suburbs called Saint Thomas's Mount:
The Tamil like neon, and their taste in iconography runs to the kitsch.. Which is okay, since it reminds me to try and swallow my snobbish pride and grin..
The custom here is to remove shoes, like Muslims do before entering a mosque.
One of the few relics of Thomas left in India.
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