From the Song dynasty until Portugal annexed Coloane in 1864, the island served China as a sea salt farm. Its terrain — mountainous, sparsely inhabited, isolated — made it useful for salt production and, in later centuries, for something else: piracy. The Ming dynasty's flourishing trade on the nearby Macau Peninsula created wealth worth stealing, and Coloane's geographic isolation made it a convenient refuge for those seeking to intercept some of that wealth. Most pirates, according to historians, were likely fishermen who had turned to a more lucrative occupation. When Portugal expanded its control over Macau in the 1860s to include Taipa, Ilha Verde, and Coloane, dislodging those pirates was part of the explicit rationale. It didn't work quickly. Coloane remained disputed by the Guangdong provincial government as late as 1912, when local authorities objected to Portuguese taxation of the island's property owners. The piracy problem persisted, off and on, until 1910.

The Chapel of St. Francis Xavier stands at the eastern end of Eduardo Marques Square in Coloane Village, built in 1928 on the southwestern coast. For many years it held relics of extraordinary significance to the Catholic world in Asia: the remains of 26 Catholic priests — both foreign and Japanese — who were crucified in Nagasaki in 1597, as well as remains of Japanese Christians killed during the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637. A bone from the arm of St. Francis Xavier himself, who died in 1552 on Shangchuan Island just 50 miles away, was also kept here before being transferred to St. Joseph's Church. The Nagasaki martyrs' relics have since moved to the Museum of Sacred Art beside the Ruins of St. Paul's. What remains in the chapel is the building itself — modest, whitewashed, quietly anchoring a square where cobblestones in black, white, and yellow are laid in patterns that mimic ocean waves, facing a promenade and the channel between Macau and the Chinese hills of Hengqin beyond.

Just north of Coloane Village, the hamlet of Lai Chi Vun takes its name from the lychee trees that once grew thickly here and from its bowl-shaped bay. The village is marked at its northern entrance by a towering banyan tree. Below it, the Estrada de Lai Chi Vun descends past buildings that once housed Macau's shipbuilding industry. The Veng Lok Shipyard and the Association of Shipbuilders of Macau-Taipa-Coloane operated here; their premises still stand, though the yards themselves have been silent for years. At the bottom of the road, Coloane Pier — once the island's only connection to the outside world — faces the waterfront at Largo do Cais. The shipyards are currently under evaluation for heritage status, a process that has moved slowly. The case for preservation rests partly on the buildings and partly on what they represent: the physical origin of an industry that once gave Macau one of its quieter economic identities, in an island that has spent the last thirty years becoming steadily less quiet.

Before the 1990s, Coloane was separated from the neighboring island of Taipa by an open bay, crossable only by the 2.2-kilometer Estrada do Istmo causeway completed in 1969. Then the land reclamation began. By the early 2000s, the bay had been filled entirely, creating the new district of Cotai — home to casino resorts, the Cotai Strip, and a scale of development that would be unrecognizable to anyone who knew the island in its quieter years. Coloane itself has so far retained something of its earlier character. Hac Sa Beach, on the eastern coast, and Cheoc Van Bay in the south remain popular swimming spots. Seac Pai Van Park covers a substantial portion of the interior. The A-Ma statue, opened in 1998, stands at 20 meters on a hilltop. Coloane Alto, at 170.6 meters, is the highest point in all of Macau. What surrounds the island — the reclaimed land, the casinos, the new roads — has made it harder to find, but it is still there: a small, historically layered, still-mostly-rural southern tip of a place that has otherwise transformed itself almost beyond recognition.