The Immaculate Conception Cathedral is the largest church in Southeast Asia by floor area, a vast modern building dedicated in 1988 by Pope John Paul II during a visit that, for many Timorese, was the first international acknowledgement that they existed as a people. The interior is unadorned by Catholic standards — whitewashed walls, plain wooden pews, modest stained glass — but the scale is genuinely impressive.
The cathedral sits a kilometre south of the seafront, in the Balide direction. Mass in Tetum draws large crowds on Sundays and on feast days; outside service times the building is usually open and quiet. The plaza in front is a good place to sit in the early evening, when the sun is off the white walls and the heat eases.