Mattancherry

Mattancherry Palace, commonly called the Dutch Palace, is actually Portuguese: it was constructed around 1550 and presented as a gift to the Rajah of Cochin. It became associated with the Dutch only after they renovated and altered it more than a century later.

Under ancient Cochin sumptuary laws, ordinary citizens were forbidden from building houses of stone, brick, or tile. Their dwellings were restricted to mud walls and thatched leaf roofs; only royal palaces and religious temples had the privilege of stone masonry and tiled roofs. Moorish merchants were sometimes allowed stone walls solely to secure their trade goods.

In 1854, the local British-influenced government established one of the region's first English schools at Mattancherry, specifically to educate Jewish children.

Under the ancient laws of Cochin, citizens could be impaled alive for selling cows to Europeans. The punishment reflected the force of local religious customs and the friction between the native administration and early European traders.

Ancient Cochin's legal system prescribed execution by an iron hook driven through the chin for low-caste murderers, who were suspended until they died. No death sentence could be carried out until the condemned person personally acknowledged its justice; if they refused, torture was legally applied to convince them.

In a report from 1793, the Rajah of Cochin described the standard punishment for minor thieves: after six months to a year in prison, a portion of their flesh or their nose was surgically removed before release, leaving a permanent physical mark of the crime.