Panaji’s central square is the leafy Municipal Gardens, also called Church Square (Largo da Igreja). The Ashokan Pillar at the gardens’ centre was once topped by a bust of Vasco da Gama, the first Portuguese voyager to set foot in Goa in 1498, but he was replaced, upon independence in 1961, by the seal of present-day India: four lions sitting back to back, atop an abacus, with the inscription ‘Truth Alone Triumphs.’
