Look into St Francis Xavier's empty grave on St Paul's Hill
Nine months in the ground, then Goa
A roofless sixteenth-century chapel ruin at the top of St Paul's Hill, above A Famosa, holding the empty grave where Francis Xavier was buried for nine months, and a wall of colonial tombstones. Free and open, with no gate.
Why it's unique
Francis Xavier died off the China coast in 1552. His body was brought to Melaka and buried for nine months in the chapel on St Paul's Hill before being shipped on to Goa. The open, empty grave is still there behind a grille inside the roofless ruin.
There is one temporary grave of Francis Xavier and this is it, which is a claim you can check by looking into the hole. The walls around it are lined with enormous Dutch and Portuguese tombstones moved in from the surrounding ground, several of them three metres tall and carved with the skull and crossbones that Dutch burghers used as memento mori, and those are the real exhibit.
Before you go
Go up the stairs from the Dutch Square side and come down the A Famosa side, and do it late. The hill faces west, the ruin has no roof, and midday is punishing, whereas an hour before sunset is when the light through the empty windows is worth the climb.
The tombstones on the walls are the real exhibit; several are three metres tall and carved with skull-and-crossbones memento mori. The armless statue of Xavier outside lost its right arm to a falling tree, which visitors invariably assume was deliberate.