Paofai Protestant Temple

Paofai Protestant Temple is considered to be the heart of the Evangelical Church in French Polynesia. Built in 1981 on the site of a bamboo chapel by Reverend Crook, it was baptized Siloama in 1869, which corrresponds to the Hebrew name Siloe – the pool in Jerusalem where Jesus healed a blind man.
In 1908, the temple was judged to be too small for the 5,000 inhabitants of Papeete, so a new temple, based on the traditional architecture of the old one, was designed by architect Rodolphe Weinmann and inaugurated on June 17, 1908. The capacity of the new temple is for 1,800 worshippers. It is situated directly behind the old temple, which is now used as a boarding house for young girls.