The Baixinha de Coimbra Project (Coimbra, Portugal) in the

the historic environment, Vol. 1 No. 2, November, 2010, 185–202
The Baixinha de Coimbra Project
(Coimbra, Portugal) in the Context of
Portuguese Buildings Archaeology
Lilia Basílio and Miguel Almeida
Dryas Arqueologia, Portugal
Despite major developments in Portuguese archaeology during the last
decade, standing buildings analysis within archaeological projects remains
marginal. Moreover, such work has mainly been concerned with conservation projects of ecclesiastic buildings, thus resulting in a significant loss of
information for other building types, particularly those within urban areas
occupied over long periods and with abundant vernacular architecture. The
work developed at the Baixinha de Coimbra (Downtown or Central Coimbra)
focused on an area occupied since the eleventh century and threatened by
a new road bisecting it. The main aim of the project was to collect all available information regarding urban evolution of this area of Coimbra, before
it was lost, and formulate some understanding of the evolution of the area.
The project’s relevance results from its contribution to understanding a core
area of Coimbra, its attention to civil architecture and urban context, and its
integrated approach within an archaeology project.
keywords Baixinha de Coimbra, buildings archaeology, Portugal, stratigraphic
analysis, vernacular architecture
Introduction and general context
Since 1995, Portuguese archaeology has experienced major developments including
new legislation, a new cultural heritage authority — Instituto Português de Arqueologia (IPA) — and a structured state policy. This was followed by a large increase in:
(1) the number of archaeology projects, namely in the context of contract archaeology; (2) the number of professional archaeologists; and (3) archaeology degrees taught
at different universities. Nonetheless, buildings archaeology remained a marginal
work area, largely ignored by this burst of legislation, and divorced from any definition of a specific state policy — problems compounded by the fact that buildings
archaeology has barely been considered within academic programmes.
© W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2010
DOI 10.1179/175675010X12817059865925
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Fortunately, in the last couple of years the importance of the subject has been
progressively stressed, leading to its inclusion in some academic programmes and the
development of specific postgraduate studies. Despite these recent developments,
there is still an evident lack of specific academic theoretical foundation and of scientific output regarding the subject, as well as a complete absence of specific legislation,
state policy, and guidance. The inevitable result has been the utmost negative impact
both for the future of the discipline and for the presence of cultural heritage preservation in Portugal.1 In consequence, several so-called ‘architectural’ projects and reconstructions of historic buildings have resulted in the unjustified and irrecoverable loss
of significant fabric within Portuguese cities, with the attendant loss of urban history,
despite the frequently firm opposition of the projects’ responsible archaeologists.2
As a result of such pressures, Portuguese buildings archaeology has mostly
consisted of a limited number of major state financed operations, involving interdisciplinary teams of architects, engineers, art historians, restorers, and archaeologists.
These projects integrate document analysis, buildings archaeology, archaeological
excavations, and restoration of the buildings but generally remain limited to listed
cultural heritage monuments, with the consequent emphasis on mainly medieval to
modern ecclesiastic constructions.3
In contrast to this situation, the study of the vast majority of non-listed buildings
and urban areas has been almost completely neglected,4 an alarming situation considering that most of the archaeological projects presently derive from construction
projects affecting these types of buildings in the context of contract archaeology. This
being the case, contract archaeology should be in a privileged position to develop
the discipline and their teams should be producing abundant and highly relevant
data regarding civil architecture and the history of Portuguese towns and villages.
Unfortunately, in the context of contract archaeology, projects related to buildings
archaeology have hardly been considered a necessity. They are rarely required
by state policy or valued by third parties — the promoters, common citizens, or
other technicians with an active role in development projects. As a result, even when
some building analysis is done effectively, it is rarely correctly integrated within a
well-structured cultural heritage project.
It is our belief that it is particularly urgent to include the systematic, historical, and
archaeological study of buildings within renewal projects affecting globally important
historic city centres. The thrust of such programmes has consisted of efforts to restore
old buildings to accommodate new residents and new forms of urban occupation.
Since the priority of these projects is to reanimate historic city centres, based on their
character as historical and unique places, stress must be placed on the maintenance
of the architectural and historical characteristics of the original constructions,
considering this as an added value for the projects, the buildings, and the historic city
centres as a whole.
The Baixinha de Coimbra project
The Baixinha de Coimbra archaeological project results from Coimbra’s surface train
network construction project, which entails the demolition of a considerable part of
the town’s medieval suburb, known as Baixinha (= Downtown), these days a part
of Coimbra’s commercial centre (Figure 1). The area is located between the River
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figure 1 Location of Coimbra within Portugal and Coimbra’s historical centre: the hill of the
first settlements (broken line),the medieval suburbia of Baixinha (dotted line), Monastery of
Santa Cruz de Coimbra (black line), and Rua da Sofia (solid line).
Base image copyright Google Earth™
Mondego and the hill where the Romans first founded the city of Aeminium,
probably on the site of a previous Iron Age hillfort.5 Later expansion to the base
of the hill, beyond the city walls, dates from the eleventh century, although some
preserved features surely derive from earlier occupation.6
Despite its continuous occupation, the Baixinha area still preserves most of its
medieval urban design and architectural features: narrow labyrinthine streets leading
to small squares, most of which are dominated by churches or chapels; two- to threestorey buildings with narrow street fronts, developing into common back yards,
sometimes preserving the typical two-door entryways.7 Larger arteries surround this
medieval core, most of which date from the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, with the exception of Rua da Sofia (Sofia Street) which has defined Baixinha’s
upper east limit since the late sixteenth century.8
The five buildings under analysis are part of a block located on the outer interface
of this medieval core (Figure 2). The block neighbours: (1) to the north-east, Rua da
Sofia, a long rectilinear street with large buildings planned and built in the sixteenth
century by the promotion of the state, which played an influential role in the modern
and contemporary history of Coimbra; (2) to the west and south-west, the area of the
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figure 2 Location of the block within Coimbra’s city centre.
Base image copyright Google Earth™
medieval suburb, occupied since the eleventh century; (3) to the south, a large square
presided over by the Monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra, an essential core area of
the town since the eleventh century.
Within the perimeter of Rua da Sofia, an archaeological operation was defined
to analyse and characterize these five buildings. This spared them from summary
demolition with limited archaeological record, in contrast to others in the path of the
projected surface train line across the Baixinha area (Figure 3).
In order to respond to the somewhat vague specifications received from the
cultural heritage authority (IPA) and the project’s promoter, and confronted with
the scarcity of previous similar projects in Portugal, we defined a holistic operation
combining analysis of both the existing built structures and the archaeological excavations, based on an integrated methodology of stratigraphic analysis. Both phases of
the project were conducted in order to achieve a common goal: to record existing
built features and to characterize both vertical and archaeological stratification so as
to document and understand the urban history of the area.
These aims demanded documentation and chronological analysis of construction
details, materials and techniques, architectural features, and decorative elements.
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figure 3 Location of the five buildings under analysis (dark tone) affected by the projected
route of the train. The lightly shaded area was demolished prior to the survey.
Base image copyright Google Earth™
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This was accomplished through the analysis of the existing buildings’ characteristics
but, mainly, through an exhaustive programme of wall tests. These comprised the
stratigraphically controlled removal of surface coatings (Figure 4a), the consequent
analysis and recording of complex stratigraphies, and the sampling of diverse construction materials (Figure 4b). This information feeds into a developing database
containing chronological and contextual information that could then be interpreted
to generate a history of the structures.
A preview of first results
Although only two buildings (22 and 23) have been fully analysed to date and work
still continues in Buildings 25, 26, and 27, the promising results obtained so far
already add relevant new information for the discussion of Coimbra’s urban
development in this area. Discoveries include:
• previously undocumented building materials and techniques
• evidence of past changes to the buildings, including: (1) suppression or transformation of architectural features; (2) blocking of former doors and windows;
(3) reconfiguration of inner spaces
• evidence of previously unknown reformulations of the area’s urban design, not
recorded in Coimbra’s extant historical plans.
Materials and building techniques: inventory and potential
Even if most buildings archaeology projects in Portugal include more or less exhaustive descriptions of construction materials and techniques, this information generally
plays a minor role in the final understanding of the buildings, which often relies
exclusively on a comparative study of the buildings’ prominent architectural
characteristics. However, when working on civil, non-monumental buildings we are
confronted with much less demonstrative architectures, thus demanding a deeper
knowledge of construction techniques and materials and their chronological and
geographical distribution. Such knowledge, however, can only derive from systematic and contextualized analysis and sampling projects, repeated in different buildings
of each city or region — an enormous data collection task yet to be done in
Portugal.
The Baixinha de Coimbra project aims at contributing to this data collection,
as the required contextualized observations and sampling are being performed
systematically. As a result, a large amount of information has already been collected
regarding the techniques and materials used, documented through description,
photography, drawing and sampling of paints, plasters, cements, tiles, bricks,
ceramic fragments, wood, nails, etc., all labelled and archived (Figure 5). Also,
detailed plans of the buildings have been made including references to the observed
construction techniques and materials, thus documenting the use of specific
techniques for specific areas or elements. These, when related to the stratigraphic
information, will provide the chronologies and context for the use of these techniques
and materials.
In addition to the direct impact on the reconstitution of the history of these
five buildings, this information will be relevant for future comparative analysis of
other building studies in Coimbra. Additionally, because systematic contextualized
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figure 4 Aspects of the wall tests at the Baixinha de Coimbra project: (a) removal of surface
coatings; (b) sampling of construction materials.
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figure 5
Example of construction techniques recorded at the Baixinha de Coimbra project.
sampling has been performed, we can now design a research programme to determine
the construction materials, compositions, and recipes (of plasters, cements, paint,
etc.), further enhancing our ability to understand the diachronic evolution of building
technology and the variability of observed options. Potentially, these data could also
inform future conservation projects in appropriate technologies and materials to be
used in restorations.
Reconstructing fragments of the buildings’ histories . . .
The considerable amount of information produced by direct observation of the buildings’ visible features and of wall stratification provided clear evidence of complex
formation histories. As expected, these buildings are not the result of one single
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construction event, but rather that of different successive transformations with
variable impacts on internal and external structure and morphology.
Obviously, a considerable part of the buildings’ original plan is now irrecoverable,
since essential information was erased by later transformations (some very recent).
Moreover, considering the lack of original or later drawn plans and the poor resolution of the available historical cartographic documents through inappropriate scale,
there is little possibility of using document analysis as a significant source of complementary information. In consequence — as frequently happens in archaeology — we
were not able to establish complete chronological sequences for the buildings.
We were, nonetheless, able to distinguish successive phases of rebuilding through
the correlation of extensive transformations that had an impact on the general
morphology of the buildings, on localized areas, or simply on particular features.
These alterations to the total built area, number of floors, façade composition,
internal subdivisions and circulation, aesthetics, etc. were represented in a series
of chronologically phased plans, used as base documents to interpret the buildings’
history.
Some architectural features had been hidden during significant transformations of
the buildings. Peculiarities were difficult to interpret when observed in isolation, but
when correlated with other discoveries in the same structure indicated significant
changes in the buildings through time. For instance, the discovery in Building 23
of ‘apron windows with stone seats’ partially removed and/or concealed under paint
and plaster (Figure 6) clarified part of the building’s history: these are architectural
elements found in Coimbra’s ‘major’ vernacular architecture of a specific period.
Thus, based on stratigraphic information, architectural style, materials, and techniques and on historical information about the evolution of this urban area, we could
correlate some of the construction phases observed in the buildings to Coimbra’s
urban history.
For example, currently we know that Building 22 mostly results, in its present
form, from two different elements. The west part of the ground floor was built in the
medieval or late medieval period and contrasts with the more recent east part of the
ground floor and upper floors. Building 23 shows a more complex history. Although
we established that it was entirely constructed in one phase, the observations clearly
show that it later suffered considerable alterations, mostly affecting the arrangement
of its inner space but some impacting on the façades. A three-storey Renaissance
loggia (Figure 7), composed of an arcade on the ground floor and two open stone
galleries on the upper floors, was subsequently transformed into three simple superimposed corridors through infill of the arcades (Figure 8). Facing an open public area,
this rare element of civil urban Renaissance architecture added an erudite character
to the construction. Its discovery was key to the chronological and contextual
definition of the building’s construction, as it allowed us to suggest a different
configuration for the back yard of Building 23. This probably consisted of a small
open square dominated by the main (?) façade of Building 23.
This building was thus constructed during the post-medieval period, most probably
towards the end of the sixteenth century or in the early seventeenth century, with
doors and windows defined by stonework, the latter incorporating ‘stone aprons’ and
‘stone seats’. The building probably had its main façade facing south (presently
inverse) marked by the Renaissance loggia. A later reformulation had a major impact
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figure 6 Example of
the suppression of
architectural features.
While removing
surface coatings the
presence of a specific
type of window was
revealed, enabling a
better understanding
of the other features
revealed and of the
building’s history.
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figure 7
195
Graphical reconstruction of the loggia identified on Building 23.
on the building’s general morphology and on the way people would access, circulate,
and use it. This consisted of the enclosure of the loggia; the suppression of other
stonework within the house; the definition of a closed corridor on the south of the
third floor above the loggia; and the opening of a direct access to the second and third
floors of Building 25. The exact chronology of these transformations remains difficult
to define: if the complementary elements introduced with these alterations can be
ascribed to the first half of the twentieth century, historical cartography clearly shows
that the space between Building 23 and its neighbouring building to the east —
non-existent before the transformation — has been occupied by a construction since
the eighteenth century.
. . . and its implications for the urban evolution of the area: integration in
Coimbra’s urban history
The recognition and analysis of the buildings’ transformations through time also
provided essential information to support a new hypothesis regarding the evolution
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figure 8 Example of the current corridor on the first floor of Building 23, after the wall tests,
where we can observe different moments of its history revealed in different stratigraphical
units.
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of this area’s urban design. The analysed block is presently an entirely built-up unit,
including its core, which has been progressively occupied by constructions extending
from the original street-facing buildings that run along the three streets and the main
square that define it (Figure 9). Classified in cultural heritage terms, Rua da Sofia is
one of the main arteries of the town. The street was planned and built in the sixteenth
century to receive the university, formerly installed in Lisbon. The plan defined a
large artery from the Monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra — a driving religious,
political, and cultural force of the town during the medieval and modern periods —
through a scarcely occupied area on the eastern limit of the medieval suburbia. Large
college buildings were to be constructed on the east side of the street, as well as
houses on its west side, to provide lodgings for students and teachers, a project which
involved the demolition of existing medieval buildings.9
Although the installation of the university here was never followed through, the
street was effectively built according to the original plan (e.g. Figure 2), which
respected a programme based on the Renaissance canons of harmony, proportion,
and regularity — characteristics that, despite recent transformations, can still be
appreciated in the façades both of the colleges and of a significant number of other
buildings.
In contrast, Rua Direita (Straight Street) and Rua Nova (New Street) consist of
arteries completely embedded in the intricate tissue of the medieval suburbia and,
in fact, most of the buildings show medieval or late medieval characteristics (cf.
Figure 2). Although Rua Direita is considered to follow part of the Roman road from
Braga to Lisboa,10 most authors place the earlier urban occupation of the area defined
as the Baixinha after the eleventh century, contemporary with the installation of
the Monastery of Santa Cruz.11 Naturally, being at the time a main access road
to Coimbra, Rua Direita must have been one of the first arteries occupied by
construction.
As for Rua Nova, while not documented before the fifteenth century, the large
number of characteristically medieval or late medieval buildings clearly show its
earlier existence. In fact, existing documentation allocates one of Coimbra’s Jewish
quarters to this area, referring to the presence of a synagogue and a gate — common
in Jewish quarters of Portuguese towns — to physically separate a community with
different religious practices. When all Jewish quarters in the country were suppressed
in the mid sixteenth century, these were either significantly demolished or fully
integrated into the urban fabric. As part of this process it was not uncommon for
some streets to be renamed Rua Nova (New Street), since these were in fact new for
the rest of the town’s citizens.12
Conceived in this general political context, the project of Rua da Sofia specifically
relates to the demolition of houses belonging to the Jewish quarter of Rua Nova.13
This explains why in the analysed block all buildings facing Rua Direita and the
majority of those facing Rua Nova strongly contrast with the buildings facing
Rua da Sofia and Praça 8 de Maio. The latter mostly consist of constructions with
a substantial footprint, four or five floors, and large façades showing balanced
compositions with large windows and balconies defined by stonework, some of which
include notable architectural embellishments (balconies, glazed tile panels, etc.:
Figure 9a). They strongly contrast with the narrow two- or three-storey buildings,
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figure 9 Examples of buildings in different
areas around the block under analysis:
(a) large buildings with balanced façade
compositions, some including notable
architectural details; (b) narrow buildings
with irregular façade compositions.
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many with irregular façade compositions, of Rua Direita and Rua Nova
(Figure 9b).
Progressing through Rua Nova into Rua da Sofia, small narrow buildings give
place to larger ones (see Figure 3), similar to those of Rua da Sofia, surely a result of
the demolitions imposed by the Rua da Sofia project. We believe that this also
explains the hybrid composition of Building 22 and the erudition of Building’s
23 architecture (Figure 10). Demolition would have gone as far as what is currently
the west part of Building 22, and Building 23 would have been built in the cultural/
architectural context of the Rua da Sofia project.
Although historical plans of Coimbra dating from the eighteenth century onwards
show a completely built-up block, with the sole exception of its core area (Figure 11),
the observations resulting from our fieldwork suggest that this had a somewhat different design, with its central area possibly corresponding to a small square accessible
through two smaller streets running parallel to Rua da Sofia (Figure 11). This hypothesis gains some support from: (1) recognition of windows and doors facing the east
and west façades of Building 23, later concealed by the construction of the contiguous
buildings; and (2) the nature of the loggia of the south façade of the building, which
corresponds to an architectural element made ‘to be seen’. The comparative analysis
of field observations and document analysis shows that such urban design could only
have existed between the construction of Building 23 — considered contemporary
with the opening of Rua da Sofia — and the eighteenth century, by which time
surviving plans indicate the area as a filled-in block.
Buildings archaeology: scientific potential and obstacles to
overcome
Beyond studying the standing structures, the present work views the buildings
from two perspectives: (1) as architectural statements, with significant socio-political
and cultural meanings; and (2) as memory records of their past users’ daily life
and relationships with the surrounding social (human) and urban (physical)
environment.
In this particular case — and while much of the work in the remaining three buildings is yet to be completed — it is already evident that Buildings 22 and 23 result
from specific historical moments in which they played active roles, but the buildings
now document obliterated urban designs and convey an image of past architectural/
aesthetic paradigms and social uses of the urban space. Thus, while keeping in mind
that fundamental parts of these buildings’ micro-history were inevitably erased by
diverse subsequent processes (time entropy, building decay, continuous human
occupation, socio-political choices, etc.), these first, very preliminary results testify to
the discipline’s potential for the construction of historical knowledge. This potential
concerns knowledge not only of construction techniques and materials, but also of
technical and architectural answers to specific or new problems and of social and
individual perceptions of domestic and public space and its diachronic evolution.
Buildings archaeology, because of its potential for the construction of historical
knowledge, should be considered as a preliminary but essential element in the definition of urban archaeological operations strategies and, later, in the interpretation
of the complex stratigraphy recorded during excavations. Furthermore, information
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figure 10 Northern façades of Buildings 22 and 23, facing Rua Nova: erudite and ample
architecture on a typical medieval street.
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figure 11 Postulated urban design contemporary to the construction of Building 23.
Base image copyright Google Earth™
collected during buildings analysis should prove fundamental for subsequent development project options, including decisions on what to preserve or demolish, how to
reconstruct and which techniques and materials to use, and what to do with the
resulting architectural objects.
The results obtained during the Baixinha de Coimbra project, following the
analysis of the built structures, will now deeply inform all subsequent archaeological
fieldwork yet to be executed. Regarding the future demolition of the buildings, at this
stage it is considered inevitable, although preservation of some elements, including
the exceptional Renaissance loggia, has been achieved through integration of such
elements into one of the proposed new buildings. The methodology developed here
provides critical information to define specific strategies in order to recover as much
historical information as possible. Further archaeological excavations will target
areas expected to deliver significant information to corroborate or test the hypotheses
raised during the analysis of the buildings. These include: the back area of Building
23; the area of the loggia; and areas where the matrix of surrounding medieval
and late medieval allotments predicts the possible walls of previous medieval
constructions.
The future of buildings archaeology in Portuguese archaeology
Despite major obstacles in the implementation of buildings archaeology as a relevant
area of research in Portuguese archaeology, the Baixinha de Coimbra project substantially proves the potential of the discipline. It is an irreplaceable tool to produce
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LILIA BASÍLIO and MIGUEL ALMEIDA
relevant information regarding the diachronic use of materials and construction
techniques, civil architecture, and general information regarding urban, social, and
even political economic and cultural history. Furthermore it provides an indispensable
basis for any informed architecture or urban management project within historic
areas.
Meanwhile, the future development of the discipline depends on both the implementation of adequate technical and scientific training and the reinforcement of the
social role of history and archaeology in public debate.
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
Miguel Almeida, ‘Proteger apesar do igespar, ip: a
arqueologia portuguesa num instituto sem competênciasde arqueologia . . . nem de património
histórico’, Praxis Archaeologica, (2008), 145–53.
For example, Maria João Neves, Miguel Almeida,
Lília Basílio, Gina Dias, Maria Teresa Ferreira and
Filipe Gonçalves, ‘“Casa do Mosteiro” (Celas,
Coimbra): muitas dúvidas e metade da sua história’,
Al-Madan, IIª série. (2007), 14, 38–47.
L. F. O. Fontes, ‘Experiências portuguesas em
Arqueologia da Arquitectura’, Estudos/Património,
9 (2006), 44–55; M. M. Ramalho, ‘Arqueologia da
Arquitectura: O método arqueológico aplicado ao
estudo e intervenção em património arquitectónico’,
Património e estudos, no. 3 (2002),19–29.
Almeida.
J. Alarcão, ‘A evolução urbanística de Coimbra: das
origens a 1940’, Cadernos de Geografia, no. especial: Actas do I Colóquio de Geografia de Coimbra
(1999), 1–10; J. Alarcão, Coimbra: a montagem
do cenário urbano (Coimbra: Imprensa da
Universidade de Coimbra, 2008).
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
V. G. Mantas, ‘Notas sobre a estrutura urbana de
Aeminium’, Biblos, 68 (1992), 487–513; W. Rossa,
‘Divercidade: urbanografia do espaço de Coimbra
até ao estabelecimento definitivo da Universidade’,
unpublished doctoral thesis, Universidade de
Coimbra, 2001; Alarcão, 2008.
L. Trindade, A casa corrente em Coimbra: dos
finais da Idade Média aos inícios da Época Moderna
(Coimbra: Câmara Municipal de Coimbra, 2002).
Rossa.
M. Brandão, O Colégio das Artes (Coimbra:
Imprensa da Universidade, 1924–32); Rossa; R.
Lobo, Santa Cruz e a Rua da Sofia: arquitectura e
urbanismo no século XVI (Coimbra: Editorial do
Departamento de Arquitectura da Faculdade de
Ciência e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra,
2006).
Mantas; Alarcão, 1999, 2008; Rossa.
Alarcão, 1999, 2008.
J. P. Loureiro, ‘Enigmas da história de Coimbra’,
Arquivo Coimbrão — Boletim da Biblioteca
Municipal, XII (1954).
Loureiro; Rossa; Lobo.
Notes on contributors
Lília Basílio is an archaeologist specializing in ceramics technology with long rescue
archaeology experience. She has been working for Dryas since 2003 and is currently
responsible for post-excavation coordination and buildings archaeology projects.
Correspondence to: Lilia Basilio, Dryas Arqueologia, Rua Anibal de Lima 168,
300-030, Coimbra, Portugal. Lilia.Basilio@dryas.pt
Miguel Almeida is a prehistorian and co-founder of Dryas in 1999. His main research
areas concern palaeolithic paleo-ethnology, lithic technology, and geoarchaeology,
mainly in France and Portugal. He is deeply involved in debates concerning the
organization of cultural heritage and archaeology.