Palácio do Deão, Quepem: the Dean's house on the Kushavati

The house publishes no opening hours: the official site says plainly visits by appointment only. Contact the owners by phone or WhatsApp on +91 98231 75639, or by email at gama.ruben@gmail.com, and agree a time. The Palácio's Instagram account posts photographs, news and visiting updates.

No entry fee is published either; ask about the cost of the visit and of lunch when you book. The owners, Ruben and Celia Vasco da Gama, show visitors around themselves.

José Paulo de Almeida was born in Braga, Portugal, and arrived in Goa on 3 October 1779, aged 19, in the entourage of Archbishop Dom Frei Manuel de Santa Catarina. He rose in the archdiocese, became Dean of the Church and, in 1787, moved his residence from Old Goa to Quepem, then covered in forest. He founded the town: he had rice, coconut palms and fruit trees planted, set up a public market and a hospital, and built the Holy Cross Church at his own cost. The house he built for himself faces that church; he modestly called it a farm house, and it came to be known as the Palácio do Deão.

The Archbishop he came with died in this house. José Paulo governed the archdiocese himself from 1831 to 1835 and died on 10 January 1835, after 55 years in Goa; he is buried in the Se Cathedral. He gave the house to the Portuguese viceroys as a holiday residence so that they would protect it and the institutions he had founded.

After his death a chaplain lived here. Around 1989 the house was given to nuns as a home for destitute women, but the upkeep of so large a house in a tropical climate proved too much and they left. It was then privatised, and in 2002 Ruben and Celia Vasco da Gama, both Goans, took it on and restored the house and garden, working from original documents traced in Portugal.

• The house: some 11,000 sq ft of floor area in an Indo-Portuguese style adapted to Indian customs. The chapel at the entrance recalls a Hindu altar, and the rear of the house borrows from Hindu houses: a gallery-veranda with a second one running out at right angles over the garden.
• The gardens: about 2 acres, long known as the most beautiful pleasure gardens in Goa, with stone vases, balustrades, a pond, a loggia, garden seats, a waterfall and a belvedere over the river.
• The library and games room: a small library of rare books on Goan history, arts, crafts and theology, and a room with draughts, carom and chess.
• Birds: the gardens and the riverbank are a good place to watch birds and other wildlife.

The leisure wing at the back of the house now serves as the restaurant: tables on the belvedere over the Kushavati, with Indo-Portuguese cooking, vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Lunch is booked in advance through the same contacts as the visit.

The address is opposite Holy Cross Church, Quepem, Goa 403705. Quepem is about 14 km from Margao, the main town of South Goa, so the simplest way is a taxi or your own scooter from Margao or the Salcete beaches. Use the map pin above and confirm directions when you book.