CHIJMES

CHIJMES is a restored 19th-century convent complex at 30 Victoria Street in the Downtown Core, a few minutes' walk from City Hall MRT station, where the former Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus houses restaurants, bars and cafés around a Gothic chapel. French sisters of the Congregation of the Holy Infant Jesus arrived on 5 February 1854 and moved into Caldwell House, a bungalow designed by George D. Coleman around 1840, founding the oldest Catholic girls' school in Singapore. Babies abandoned at a door on Victoria Street were taken in by the sisters, and that door was named the Gate of Hope in 1996. The chapel, designed by Father Charles Benedict Nain, was consecrated on 11 June 1904. The school moved to Toa Payoh in 1983. The chapel and Caldwell House were gazetted together as a national monument on 26 October 1990.

After restoration the complex opened to the public in 1996 as CHIJMES, and it received a Merit Award in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards in 2002. Most visitors come to eat or drink in the courtyards and cloisters, but the architecture rewards a slow walk: the 648 column capitals of the chapel are carved with flowers and birds. The former chapel, renamed CHIJMES Hall, is used as a wedding and events venue, so its interior is not always open. Bras Basah and Esplanade MRT stations are also about four minutes' walk away.