At the advent of the Portuguese in AD 1510, all of today's northern territories (Ilhas, Bardez, Pernem, Bicholim, Antruz, and Sattari) were part of the Bijapur Sultanate.

Lured by the thrill of discovery and goaded by the prospect of seeking Christians and spices Portugal embarked on perilous voyages to the Orient which culminated in Bartholomew Dias’ trip around the Cape of Good Hope.

A decade later Vasco Da Gama set off eastwards and in AD 1498 landed in Calicut and broke the Arab monopoly of trade.

Fired with the dream of establishing an Eastern Empire for Portugal, Afonso De Albuquerque, Governor-General of Goa, set to acquire strategic centers also the trade route.

Though temporarily routed, he triumphantly regained possession of the city on 25 November 1510, and kneeling in the public square he dedicated Goa to St. Catherine whose feast was on that day.

The arrival in AD 1542 of a young Spanish nobleman turned Jesuit, with a brilliant background of academic learning, created an impact that was tremendous.

To intensify the flickering torch of freedom, the Indian Socialist leader, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, courted arrest on 18 June 1946 by defiantly addressing a mammoth meeting in Goa.

To express the peoples's longing for freedom, satyagrahas were launched until the year ended in different parts of the Portuguese enclaves and resulted in 1500 Goans being imprisoned and the ring leaders deported.

At the time of the 2011 Census of India, 65.86% of the population in the district spoke Konkani, 14.36% Marathi, 8.65% Hindi, 3.62% Kannada, 2.39% Urdu, 0.92 Portuguese, 0.86 English, 0.80 Malayalam, 0.68% Telugu, 0.47% Tamil, 0.46% Gujarati and 0.43% Bengali as their first language.

[15] Other tourist sites include Fort Aguada, the church of Mae De Deus, the temple of Boghdeshwara,[16] and the Hanuman Natya Graha theatre centre.