Church of St. Augustine, Goa

The church was built on top of the Monte Santo (Holy Hill), between 1597 and 1602 by Augustinian friars who landed in Goa in 1587. The church was considered one of the three great Augustinian churches in the Iberian world along with El Escorial and the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. and 'Saathiya' from the Bollywood hit Singham. == Structure ==

The church had four towers of which only one remains. The remaining tower is a four-storied structure built of laterite and 46 m in height. Excavations show that the complex had eight chapels, four altars and a convent. == Relics of St. Ketevan ==

In the late 1980s, archaeologists from the Soviet Union and Georgia began efforts to trace the relics of Ketevan the Martyr, a Georgian queen who had delivered herself as a hostage to Shah Abbas I and was martyred on 13 September 1624 for refusing to deny her faith; the relics were believed to be in Goa. A Georgian team conducted excavations in the church, which were followed by independent efforts by the Archaeological Survey of India. The missions were looking for a black box which was supposed to contain the saint's bones, based on information collected by Professor António da Silva Rego in 1958 from Portuguese historical documents about their missions in the East. == References ==