Sunday, March 8, 2009

Sion

View- The Sion fort

Sion (Portuguese old name Siao) is a suburb of Mumbai. In 1543, the Portuguese took possession of the islands of Bombay by force. The Portuguese gave the Jesuit priests the sole ownership of some of these islands. The Jesuits built a Chapel on the hill (near the present day railway station) and named it after Mount Zion (Sion) in Jerusalem. The Sion fort was built by the British Governor of Bombay Gerard Aungier atop a conical hillock. It was built between 1669 and 1677 It is also the name of a railway station on the Mumbai Suburban Railways on the Central Railway line(main line). The Marathi name is a corruption of the word Shiva, which means boundary or limit. In the 17th century the village formed the boundary between Mumbai and Selsette.




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