St. Aloysius Chapel Heritage Paintings
A late-19th-century Jesuit college chapel whose interior is covered floor to ceiling in frescoes by Italian artist Antonio Moscheni, often called the "Sistine Chapel of Mangaluru."
The chapel of St. Aloysius College, consecrated in 1900, houses an extraordinary body of fresco and oil-on-canvas work by the Italian Jesuit painter Antonio Moscheni, who covered the ceiling, walls, and altar niches with scenes from the life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga and other biblical and allegorical subjects using techniques of Renaissance perspective rarely found elsewhere in coastal India.
Painted between 1899 and 1900 with the help of local assistants, the scheme is considered one of the finest examples of European-style church painting in the country, drawing comparisons — admittedly a considerable overstatement of scale, but locally cherished — to the Sistine Chapel. The college itself, founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1880, has long been one of coastal Karnataka’s most influential educational institutions.
Getting there: The chapel stands on the St. Aloysius College campus on Lighthouse Hill in central Mangaluru, a short walk from the Mangalore Head Post Office at Hampankatta.
The site itself
Where to get your stamp cancelled
This may not be next to the site itself — some post offices serve several nearby landmarks.
- Post office
- Mangaluru Head Post Office
- Pincode
- 575001
- Address
- Mangalore Head Post Office, Lighthouse Hill Road, Hampankatta, Mangaluru, Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka
Sources
- Project maintainer transcription of the physical Philately Passport booklet (district/landmark/post office list)