St. Francis Xavier's Church, Sampaloor

St. Francis Xavier's Church, or Sampaloor Palli, is a pilgrim centre on Palayamparambu Road at Sampaloor, a village on the Chalakudy River in Kadukutty panchayat, about 7 km from Chalakudy railway station. Francis Xavier came here in 1542, 1544 and 1548. When the Dutch took Kochi in the 1600s, Jesuits moved St. Paul's Seminary here and renamed the village, then Ambazhakad, after St Paul. John de Britto later visited, Constanzo Beschi, author of Thembavani, rests beside the church, and the German Jesuit Arnos Pathiri studied Sanskrit and Malayalam here and was ordained in it.

Tipu Sultan's invasion destroyed the church in 1781; it was rebuilt in 1862 and the present building was consecrated in 1979. The complex includes St. Paul's Press, set up in 1663, where early Jesuit works, including the first text in Malayalam, were printed. Two museums, the Historicum and the Anglo-Indian Cultural Museum, display lamps, vestments, statues and cannon balls from Tipu's attack.