Wanghailou Church

Wanghailou Church (望海楼教堂) stands at 292 Shizilin Street in Hebei District and was once the cathedral of the Catholic diocese of Tianjin. The site had an earlier life: in 1773 Tianjin salt merchants raised a three-storey tower of 152 rooms at Sanchahekou as an imperial resting palace, which the Qianlong emperor named Haihe Lou. In 1869 the French missionary Xie Fuxin pulled down the Chongxi Guan and built the city's first Catholic church on the spot. It was burned in the Tianjin massacre of 21 June 1870, after which the Qing court paid 400,000 taels of silver, rebuilt in 1897 from that money, burned again by the Boxers in 1900, and built a third time in 1904.