The ancient city of Cochin, today's Kochi, has been drawing traders, explorers, and travelers to its shores for over 600 years. Nowhere else in India could you find such an intriguing and unlikely blend of giant Chinese fishing nets, a 450-year-old synagogue, ancient mosques, Portuguese and Dutch-era houses, and the British Raj's crumbling remains. The result is an f medieval Portugal and Holland and an English village on the tropical Malabar Coast of Kerala. It is the heritage of a spirit of tolerance, mainly in the old city of Kochi, formerly Cochin, a multicultural centre of the Indian spice trade for many centuries. Merchants from Asia and Europe established coastal settlements here, and the first mosque, synagogue, and church in India were built in Kerala. Hinduism has undoubtedly shaped Kerala, and the mythological legends regarding the origin of Kerala are essentially Hindu, but still today, 56% of Kerala residents are Hindus, 24% are Muslims, and 19% are Christians. The Jews arrived in Kerala in 573 BC. with spice traders, possibly as early as the 7th century BC. The tradition of the Cochin Jews maintains that 10,000 Jews migrated to Kerala after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem (72 AD). According to local Syriac Nasrani Christian tradition and Eastern Christian books, Thomas the Apostle also visited Kerala in 52 AD. to proselytize amongst Kerala's Jewish settlements. The Portuguese Vasco Da Gama arrived in 1498, and in 1505 Francisco de Almeida was appointed Viceroy of Portuguese India, with headquarters at Kochi. The Portuguese destroyed the famous Cochin Synagogue in 1661, but the Dutch, and later the British, were tolerant, allowing the Jews to pursue their everyday life in Cochin. After Israel's creation in 1948, most Jews emigrated to Israel. Kerala and Kochi are also the
homeland of the Kathakali, a fusion of esotericism, Kalarippayat martial arts, and Kathak and Bharatnatyam dances. The costumes are refined versions of ritual Arian and Dravidian art, as epic poems like Mahabharata and Ramayana inspire the plots. Characters are divine and ultramundane, so their essence's representation needs make up excessively far from daily life's reality. A Kathakali actor uses a lot of time to achieve a complete transformation of the human face, essential to transport the spectators in a far and fantastic world where the divine is part of daily life, and everything expresses emotions and feelings, from music to the colours.