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GPS 40.20291316314402, -8.433441874698948

The Monastery of Santa Clara de Coimbra, popularly known as the Convent of Santa Clara-a-Velha, is located on the left bank of the Mondego river, in the parish of Santa Clara and Castelo Viegas, in the city, municipality and district of Coimbra, in Portugal.

It represents a moment of experimentation with the Gothic style in the country. Its foundation, at the end of the 13th century, is part of a situation of gradual influence and acceptance of the Order of Friars Minor in the Court and in Portuguese society in general.

It is classified as a National Monument by Decree of June 16, 1910.

History

Background: the convent of D. Mor Dias

The appeal of the way of life proposed by Santa Clara took Dona Mor Dias, noble lady of Coimbra, daughter of D. Vicente Dias, superjudge of Afonso III of Portugal and mayor of Coimbra, and of D. Boa Peres, granddaughter of the chancellor Julião Pais, to found a house of Clarissas.

Although since 1278 he had made efforts to establish his house of Poor Clares, since 1250 it had been housed in the Convent of São João das Donas, then dependent on the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra.

On April 13, 1283, he obtained a license to build a monastery dedicated to Saint Clare and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, whose first stone was laid on April 28, 1286, near the Franciscan convent that had previously been installed (1247), on the bank left of the Mondego river.

However, due to the resources (goods and income) with which he endowed the new convent, the religious of Santa Cruz vehemently opposed the work, on the grounds that D. Mor was a professed soror of Santa Cruz and, therefore, dependent on him. in the spiritual and temporal. Despite the opposition, D. Mor Dias took some nuns from São João das Donas with him, and the dispute thus opened lasted for about thirty years.

In 1302, with the death of the founder, she bequeathed her assets and income to the new convent. The dispute, however, continued, culminating in its extinction on December 2, 1311.

The second foundation: the convent of the Holy Queen

Since 1307, however, Saint Isabel of Aragon, Queen of Portugal, had been interested in the same, engaging in the mediation of the conflict that managed to end in 1319. In the meantime, it obtained from Pope Clement V, on April 10, 1314, authorization for the refoundation of the Monastery. From then on, he devoted much of his time and his heritage to its enhancement.

In 1316 work began on the second construction, funded by the queen, who also determined to build, next to the Monastery, a hospital for thirty poor people (completed in 1333) - with a cemetery and chapel -, and a Palace where, in 1325, when widowed, collected. In 1317, the first nuns, coming from Zamora, settled there.

The royal architect responsible for the works was master Domingos Domingues, who also worked on the cloister of the Monastery of Alcobaça. Having died in 1325, he was replaced by master Estevão Domingues. It was under his guidance that the work on the church was completed and the construction of the cloisters of the Monastery of Santa Clara began, between 1326 and 1327. The cloisters were supplied by a water pipe coming from Quinta do Pombal (now Quinta das Lágrimas). .

As D. Dinis of Portugal died in 1325, shortly after his death, D. Isabel retired to the Monastery, taking the habit of the Poor Clares but not taking vows, which allowed her to keep her fortune, which she used for charity. He made his will in 1328, in which he expressed his will to be buried in the Monastery, bequeathing goods and resources for the construction of a chapel, for the works of the convent, and for the maintenance of the Donas. He would die in Estremoz, on July 4, 1336.

The new church

The new church was consecrated in 1330 by the then bishop of Coimbra, D. Raimundo Ebrard II (1325-1333). Its design, of Romanesque appearance with thick vestments and buttresses, respects, in terms of plan and elevations, the layout of the Poor Clares' temples - three naves with seven spans, without transept, and transept with three chapels (those at the quadrangular ends; the polygonal chancel). The apse and the apses have a polygonal shape, characteristic of the Gothic period.

Estêvão Domingues covered the central nave with a broken barrel vault, supported by large cross arches, giving up, it seems, to cover it with a ribbed vault. However, in the side naves he clearly opted for this system, despite major technical imperfections which are not strange difficulties in implanting the temple, which very soon would sink into the flooded fields on the banks of the Mondego. Despite these difficulties, the master's objective was achieved: to build a vertical temple (although today the sinking and the intermediate floor built make it difficult for us to understand the slender proportions of the set), well lit by high side crevices.

It was unusual at the time for the construction of three naves of identical height, vaulted in stone, instead of the wooden roof, then usual for the Mendicant Orders, as well as the absence of a transept, which allowed for a greater length of the cloister.

The naves are illuminated by two rose windows at the ends of the central nave and by double, high-rise windows on the side walls.

Abandonment of the set

The life of the Monastery was marked, over the centuries, by successive floods caused by the Mondego floods, the first of which was already in 1331, a year after the consecration of the temple, which announced a difficult coexistence with the waters. The solution found over the centuries was the successive heightening of the ground floor until, in the 17th century, the nuns were forced to build an upper floor alongside the temple and vacate the lower one, which also happened in the other dependencies of the Monastery. However, deteriorating living conditions led to the construction, on the initiative of King João IV of Portugal, of a new building on neighboring Monte da Esperança - the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Nova.

Permanently abandoned by the religious community in 1677, the old monastery came to be known as Santa Clara-a-Velha.

After abandonment, the monastery and its surroundings gave way to a farm, with the upper part of the convent being used as a dwelling, hayloft and corrals.

Contemporary interventions

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was subject to an extensive campaign of restoration works on the initiative of the DGEMN from the 1930s onwards. Even so, the complex continued to be a victim of the waters of the river. In this unoccupied space, immersed in the sediments that only left the upper part of the church visible, an image of a ruin haloed with romanticism was created, which was maintained until the 1990s.

In 1991, an ambitious project was started to recover and enhance the site, with a budget of around 7.5 million Euros, under the coordination of Archaeologist Artur Côrte-Real.

The archaeological campaign lasted between 1995 and 2000, uncovering the lower part of the church and the cloister, making it possible to collect a significant collection, material testimony of the conventual past. Having decided to keep the excavated perimeter dry (1977), a peripheral water containment curtain was built, the first step towards the rehabilitation of the site. An important area of ​​archaeological reserve was also included, comprising the second cloister and annexes, bedroom and refectory, to be researched in the future.

In 2001, an international competition was launched for the restoration of the monument, won by Atelier 15, with a project in charge of the architects Alexandre Alves Costa, Luís Urbano and Sérgio Fernandez.

The Interpretive Center

The project to enhance the former Monastery, launched in 2004, included the construction of a building to house the Interpretation Centre. Completed in 2008, it opened to the public on April 18, 2009.

The monastery hosted for a long time the Clarissa nuns, who lived in cloister. These nuns left behind an important collection of porcelain and earthenware, rosaries, rings and many other objects that make it possible to reconstruct their day-to-day lives, which can be seen in an exhibition set up in the interpretive centre, which houses "the history of the site".

This new center consists of a building of one thousand square meters, with museum functions, equipped with an auditorium, exhibition rooms, a shop and a cafeteria.

The intervention cost around 16 million euros (six million of which in the water containment system).

The Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha was awarded the Europa Nostra 2010 award, one of the most important European awards.

Floods On January 11, 2016, the waters of the Mondego flooded the monastery again, causing loss of equipment at the Interpretative Center and documents.

EDP ​​gave the order to open the gates of the Aguieira dam due to the heavy rains that fell in the region, but this procedure was not the most correct, as the opening of the gates could have been done gradually.

The damage caused by the floods, in which the water level reached five meters, is estimated at between 450,000 and 600,000 euros.

The Monastery returned on February 13, 2016 to be flooded by the waters of the Mondego. The accesses to the monastery and part of the Gothic building were invaded by water about a meter and a half high.

In 2020, recovery works began, remaining closed until July 2023.