With more people wanting to see the ‘fort’ on the Fort Kochi beachfront that saw the footfall of three colonial powers — the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English — history buffs are seeking steps to conserve the laterite-brick remnants of Fort Emmanuel that was built along the beachfront by the Portuguese in 1503.
The fort, which was a bastion of the Portuguese, is said to have begun from Bastion Bungalow, which is now a heritage museum, up to the southern end of the beach from where INS Dronacharya, Indian Navy’s gunnery school, begins. It is estimated that there were many bastions on the fort.
History has it that Fort Emmanuel was built as a symbol of the strategic alliance between the maharaja of Kochi and the monarch of Portugal, after whom it was named. By 1806, the Dutch and later the British destroyed most walls and bastions of the fort.
