THE DIGITAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE

A FAMOSA FORTRESS, MALAYSIA

M.I ZainalAbidin a, *, A. Bridges a, & A. Razak b

a
Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, 131 Rottenrow G4 0NG UK –
(mohamad.zainal-abidin , a.h.bridges)@strath.ac.uk,
b
Faculty of IT, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, 63100 Malaysia - aishah@mmu.edu.my

KEY WORDS: Digital archaeological reconstruction, fortress, cultural heritage, 3D model, virtual world

ABSTRACT:

The “A Famosa Fortress” is one of the oldest partially extant European buildings in Malaysia. Its origins may be traced back to a
fortress built by the Portuguese in 1511. The fortress is located in the city of Melaka and was largely destroyed during the British
occupation of 1824. Throughout that 300 years period of occupation it went through several architectural developments and
changes. At the moment there is no major action taken to fully preserve this heritage. Additionally, with the complex logistic
condition and geographical factor of the Melaka city today, it is impossible to fully reconstruct this fortress in its physical
context. As an alternative solution, we propose to digitally reconstruct the development of this fortress in various eras. There are
several challenges to be overcome in developing the digital archaeological reconstruction of the A Famosa Fortress such as the
long timescale of development and rebuilding on the site; the minimal amount of authoritative documentation and the variety of
measurement systems and graphical projections used in the early descriptions of the fortress. This paper presents some findings
on the architectural information of the fortress based on various data sources and some preliminary approaches that we have done
to verify the consistency, similarity and integrity of the data. This verification of data is the most important process in this
research considering the remaining of the fortress is no longer available. From the result, we found that the fortress undergo
different development stages under different occupation and a lot of data still need to be collected to get an accurate measurement
of the fortress. In the future work, we proposed to use the traditional 3D polygonal modelling for the digital reconstruction of the
fortress.

1. INTRODUCTION fortress of Melaka continued its architectural development

1.1 Background
Historically, Melaka’s strategic position in South East Asia
has made it as an important centre of commerce (Thomaz &
Pintado, 2000). The traders used to trade various items such as
spices, cloth, tin, silk, porcelain and many more. These traders
came from all over the world: India, China, Borneo, Arabia
and Europe. Melaka’s popularity attracted the Portuguese to
expand their power in commercial dealings, military
occupation and religion. The Portuguese believed that by
controlling Melaka, they could monopolise spice trading
which was a very valuable item in Europe and expand their
military power. One said that whoever is lord of Melaka has
his hand on the throat of Venice (Pires & Rodrigues, 1944).
Besides, one of the Portuguese’s objectives was to expand the
influence of Christianity in this region and this could only be
done by seizing Melaka.
In 1511, the Portuguese, with fifteen small and great sails and
with sixteen hundred fighting men laid siege to Melaka (Ryan,
N. J. 1960). With advanced strategy and weapons, the
Portuguese managed to capture Melaka within three weeks
and, on August 10th, 1511 Melaka fell into Portuguese hands
(Noonan, L. A. 1989). Albuquerque was the captain for the
new Portuguese government in Melaka. He immediately
ordered a fortress to be built for defensive purpose (Eredia &
Mills, 1997). With this success, it also attracted the Dutch
with the monopoly of the trading in South East Asia. The
over this time. Prior to the occupation of the Dutch, they
heavily bombarded the fortress which has critically destroyed
part of the fortress. After they succeeded to conquer Melaka in
1641, the Dutch carried out major reconstruction on the
fortress as part of their strategy to strengthen their power. This
reconstruction involved the extension of the fortress walls and
bastions (Leupe & Hacobian, 1936). When the British took
over the Dutch’s position in 1824, the British captain in
Melaka, William Farquhar instructed the fortress to be
destroyed. As the result, the only evidence left today is a gate
to access the fortress which is known as Porta de Santiago
(Figure 1). The entire occupation timeline can be summarised
in the table below (Table 1):
Conqueror Occupation
Portuguese 1511-1641
Dutch 1641-1824
British 1824-1957
Table 1: A timeline of occupation in Malaysia

*
Corresponding author.

Figure 1: Remains of old Portuguese fortress in Melaka, Porta
de Santiago (Asia Explorers, 2003)
1.2 Motivation
Presently the Malaysian government is taking another step to
preserve some of the new findings in this fortress. The
conservation team is reconstructing one of the bastions known
as the Middleburgh bastion which dates from the Dutch
occupation. Nadharaj (2003) explains, “However, work to
uncover more of the buried wall, despite its historical
significance and potential to draw more tourists into the area,
may not be feasible as it would involve tearing up the major
road that links the old town with the new commercial area”.
Hence, only certain part of the fortress can be reconstructed.
In order to solve this problem, we propose to digitally
reconstruct this fortress in form of 3D model which can be
navigated in the virtual world. Since the fortress itself has
faced several changes in its design and layout, by
reconstructing it in 3D allows the researchers to investigate
and study the development of these changes from architectural
and historical aspects.
1.3 Objectives
There are several objectives for this research:
1. To collect and analyse all the related documents
about this fortress and translate into visual forms.
2. To study the historical and architectural background
of the fortress including the functions and structures from
various resources.
3. To reconstruct the fortress design development in
3D models based on collected data from various
resources.
4. To provide reliable and standard 3D models of this
fortress for architectural visualization and historical
education purpose.
2. ISSUES
There are several challenges encountered in developing the
digital archaeological reconstruction of the A Famosa
Fortress. They are as explained below:
1. The use of advanced methods such as
photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning to develop
the digital model are not possible because the
fortress has been badly destroyed. Physical
reconstruction of the fortress requires a very long
timescale of development and rebuilding the entire
fortress on the site is nearly impossible because the
fortress’s location now has been developed into a
busy city.
2. It is inarguable that the lack of authoritative
documentation is the main obstacle in this research.
Most of the documents are scattered all over the
world. To trace these documents requires us to
contact related bodies in the countries that were
involved in the past occupation in Melaka such as
Portugal, Netherlands and Britain. Additionally
these documents are very old and require translation.
3. The variety of measurement systems and graphical
projections used in the early descriptions of the
fortress requires us to translate them into standard
units. Other than that we also need to compare its
old graphical projections and match with other
graphical and textual resources. Any similarity in
these findings will strongly support our rationale.
3. FINDINGS
3.1 Fortress design development
At this stage, we managed to collect several drawings and
paintings from various resources (mostly during Portugese and
Dutch era) that describe A Famosa in visual form. These
drawings have some similarities between each other. Other
than visuals we also found some textual descriptions about
this fortress which are very helpful to assist and support the
reconstruction process. These textual descriptions are taken
from old letters and books. For instance, Lima, (1988) states
that in 1588, Joao Baptista Cairato, an Italian military
architect had inspected the fortress and made suggestion on
alteration for military security purpose.
Based on our analysis on the collected data, we have
categorised the design development of this fortress into 4
stages namely;
1. The early stage: single building with a tower
2. Extension of fortress under the Portuguese
occupation
The Dutch occupation
The British occupation
3.1.1 The early stage: single building with a tower: In
the early Portuguese Malacca book, Thomaz et al., 2000,
describes figure 2, “Malacca in the first half of the 16th
century according to a plate from ‘Lendas da India’ by
Gaspar Correia. The walls had not yet been raised and the
central district, as weak as the district of Upeh is protected
by a simple palisade. The Famosa fortress stands out, clearly
medieval, with its four storey keep and a single bastion
facing the sea, to place artillery. All the houses are
apparently covered by a vegetal substance.
Figure 2: Fortaleza de Malacca, drawing by Gaspar Correia,
1527, in his manuscript works, “Lendas da India”
(Correa & Felner, 1975)
There are no convents yet, only the mother church, next to the
fortress, and a small chapel on the hill. The sketch is
obviously, rather schematic and does not convey the
dimension of the city, which should, according to both the
calculation of the Sejarah Melayu and Portuguese, number
about 200 000 souls.
Figure 3 presented a more detailed plan of 'A Famosa' built
by Alfonso de Albuquerque in 1511. The tower called
'Fortaleza' which served as residence of the captain, the
courtyard with a well, the jail (tronco) and the magazine
(almazem) where guns, ammunition and navigation
implements were kept.
Figure 3: Plan of the ‘A Famosa’ source Thomaz et al (2000)
3.1.2 Extension of fortress wall under the Portuguese
occupation (within 1568-1604): The actual date for the
drawing in Figure 4 is unknown but it was published by
Silveira, (Silveira, 1956) and Manguin (Manguin, 1988).
Manguin came out with a proper drawing that describes the
details in the fortress. The drawing noticeably shows the
wall extension of former fortress in figure 2 (marked with
black circle). Manguin has clearly indicated some of the
most important fortress elements in his reproduced drawing
such as the number and names of the bastions, hospital,
churches, fortress gates and tower bridge.
Figure 4: Anonymous Portuguese drawing of the Malacca
fortress, dated 1568. The original is kept at the
Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Correa
& Felner, 1975).
The extension of A Famosa is also supported by Thomaz et.
al, 2000 which explained Figure 5 as “The walled section of
Malacca in 1604 according to a sketch by Manuel Godinho de
Eredia. The wall is already completed, encompassing the
former fortress, with its tower, all public buildings (town hall,
bishop's place, Santa Casa da Misericordia, two hospitals, the
school of the Jesuits and several churches and convents). The
wall features seven strongholds destined for artillery, both on
land and sea sides (Figure 5). The sketch notes the contours of
a new outline, broader, on the land side, that was to remain
only a project. The walled section encompasses a green area
on the hillside, where the school of the Jesuits stood,
accessible through three staircases”.
Figure 5: Eridia’s drawings (1604) of the fortress of Melaka
Figure 6: Sousa’s drawing on Melaka, 1660’s
Figure 6 shows another illustration of the extended wall of A
Famosa during Portugese occupation. It is entitled “Plan of
Malacca” by Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Portuguese chronicler,
from a work entitled "Asia Portuguese", published in Madrid
in the 1660's (Kennedy, 1962).
 3.1.3 The Dutch occupation: Figure 7 illustrated A in size and shape of the fortress between the two eras. Further
Famosa during the Dutch era by Heydt which was a very study is needed to identify more detail information.
detailed drawing complete with scale and legends. This was
between 1735 – 1744. The drawing clearly shows some of
the additional elements such as walls and bastions. The
fortress itself has a few changes particularly outside the
walls which are surrounded by the moat. It is also found that
the size of the fortress has been extended during the Dutch
era as compared to during the Portuguese era.

(a)

(b)

Figure 7: The Dutch drawing, Copperplate printing of Plan

oder Grund Riss der Stadt u. Vest. Malacca by
Helydt, Johan Wolfgang

Most of the drawing during the Dutch era is more accurate,

well organised and properly described. It also includes the
measurements and elements of the fortress.

3.1.4 The British Occupation: According to the history, (c)

after Malacca fell into British’s hand, it had long since
ceased to be of any commercial importance, and in order to
avoid the expense of maintaining the fort and to prevent it
from becoming danger if it fell again into other hands, the
walls of fort were destroyed in 1824,by William Farquhar,
the British captain. As the result, the only evidence left
today is a gate to access the fortress which is known as Porta
de Santiago (Figure 1).

3.2 Comparison of drawings

As we can see from the collected drawings, it is difficult to

make a direct comparison from one source to another since the
drawing is based on different perspective and era. This is
because the development of this fortress itself can be divided
into four stages as discussed previously and most of the
drawings during Portuguese era were not properly labelled and
did not include any measurement.
As one of our preliminary solution to solve the above
problem, we tried to map each of the different illustrations
into one common perspective. For an initial comparison, we
have chosen the Dutch drawing as our main plan and project it
onto several Portuguese perspective drawings as shown in
Figure 4. The observations have highlighted some differences
Figure 8: Projection of the Dutch era of Malacca fort onto
Portuguese drawings: a) the outline of Figure 7, b)
Projection of (a) to Figure 4, c) Projection of (a) to
Figure 5 and d) Projection of (a) to Figure 6.
3.3 Fortress elements
The major fortress elements are walls and bastions. Each
bastion has its name, based on our findings the name for each
bastion also being changed when the Dutch captured Melaka
from the Portuguese. According to the Malacca Centenary
Committee the names of the bastions are as below:

Dutch names Portuguese names
Fredrick Hendrick Courassa
Middleburgh
Ernestus Casimir Hospital de Povne
Amsterdam St. Domingo
Victoria St. Domingo
Emelia Madre Deos
Henriette Louijse Ongie Mille virgines
Wilhelmus St. Lago
Mauritius Hospital del Rey
Table 2: Bastions in the old fort (Malacca Centenary
Committee)
3.4 Fortress measurement
As discussed earlier, it is difficult to get accurate
measurements for the fortress especially during the
Portuguese era since it is not drawn up to scale and hardly
include any measurement or label. Further more, according to
Eredia (1997), A Famosa had the shape of a pentagon and its
perimeter was 655 fathoms which is equal to 1.441 km.
However, the correct metric conversion of 1 fathom is equal
to 1.8288, this means 655 fathoms is equal to 1.198 km. This
is another example of problems in assembling accurate data
for reconstruction.
Based on our research on various sources, we have come out
with a rough measurement of the fortress wall during the
Dutch era as presented in Figure 9. We have also done some
calculations to prove that the wall measurements and the angle
connecting the wall, is consistent and correct using the law of
sine and the law of cosines.
Figure 9: Measurement of the fortress wall during Dutch era.
4. FUTURE WORK
Presently we are still collecting as much information as
possible about this fortress. Since the remains of the fortress
are very small, the only method of reconstruction is traditional
3D polygonal modelling. The use of advanced methods such
as photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning are not practical
due to these methods requiring physical objects to be
measured. We propose that the process of the 3D modelling
will commence once the data is fully obtained and the major
arguments are answered. Theoretically all of the information
from the drawings and textual descriptions will be translated
into visual form. This will assist the researchers if any
confusion in 3D modelling process happens. The 3D models
will be modelled in 3DS Max and the process of retracing the
plans will be done in Auto CAD.
5. CONCLUSIONS
In our attempt to reconstruct this fortress into digital format
we found that it is not possible to come out with one fixed and
permanent design. This is because the studies have proven that
‘A Famosa’ has gone through different modifications and
physical reconstruction. Historically this fortress has changed
hand from the Portuguese to the Dutch and finally to the
British. Hence, the 3D models that we proposed are to be
based on the identified development of this fortress design.
Presently we have not decided about the actual 3D models to
be developed until we finalised our data collection.
Another important challenge is that the early evidence such as
perspective drawings and plans are not to scale, have incorrect
perspective points and no proper measurements. In order to
reconstruct these 3D models, we need to analyse the collected
data supported by the textual descriptions from old letters,
journals and books. These facts must match and support each
other.
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