built by Count John Maurice between 1640 and 1642 in Recife, then the seat of the colony of New Holland. It had two tall, square towers with five floors, connected by a covered walkway, giving it the appearance of a church. The towers, besides embellishing the palace, served as a landmark for sailors, who could see them from a distance of more than seven miles. One of them was used as a lighthouse and the other as an astronomical observatory, the first one founded in the Southern Hemisphere. Protected from a military point of view by cannons, it had a large moat and Ernesto Fort. Between 1774 and 1787, being quite ruined due to the fights against the Dutch that occurred in the previous century, it was demolished by order of the then governor José César de Meneses. One of the oldest preserved examples of civil architecture is the Garcia d'Ávila Tower House in Bahia, now in ruins. The house had its beginnings in a fortified tower built in the 1550s and enlarged in the 17th and 18th centuries in the style of the noble Portuguese stone houses. The house also has a curious 16th century chapel of hexagonal shape. In Salvador, the administrative buildings in rammed earth constructed in the 16th century in the main square were later replaced by others in stonework. The governor's palace (now lost) and the town hall were rebuilt in the second half of the 17th century. In the 1960s the town hall was renovated and returned to its original 16th century plain appearance. It is characterized by the porticoed gallery on the first floor and the tall central tower, which would influence other chambers built in colonial Bahia. In the colony's inlands, sugar mills and farmhouses multiplied. Around São Paulo there are still several examples of 16th and 18th century rural houses, some within the São Paulo megalopolis itself, such as the so-called Sertanista's House, dating from the 17th century, and the Butantã's House, from the mid-18th century. Compared to previous centuries, in the 18th century the quantity and quality of civil buildings increased, although in general civil architecture produced buildings of much less size than religious architecture. In the villages and cities most of the residences had only one floor, while the noblest ones could have a second floor - so called sobrados - or even more, reaching four floors in some