Coimbra - 2000 A thousand Years of History

Located in its magnificent hill, altiva position, it meets beautiful Coimbra, land of history and tradition. Its feet run in calmness waters of the Mondego, forming as that a mirror where the city reflecte all its graciosidade.
The city saw to grow its primitive core of povoamento in the top of a mountain of the leafy hill of the High one that, besides supplying an excellent strategical position to the city, it also constituted an almost obligator place of pass between the North and the South.
Relatively to the prehistoric occupation of burgo, it remains a inquietante silence. It is continued in the conjectural field the one that a aturada archaeological inquiry will only be able to give some certezas. Certezas these that already we find in the Roman period.


Aeminium - Roman name of Coimbra - became a city effectively. Its vital center emanated of fórum, construido on a platform that seated in a magnificent criptopórtico (this spectacular workmanship of arquitectónica engineering under the current National Museum can be seen Axe of Castro).

Beyond fórum, one knows that the town saw to emerge in its urban perimeter other buildings: honorific arcs, an aqueduct and, for gáudio of the spectators of the races of horses, even so the certezas in escape them in this aspect, a circus.

Together to the way Olissipo-Braccara Augusta, current Santa Cruz, it is probable that to spas or public banns have been constructed.
The Barbarians would have to bring with them strong disturbances, if well that the esplendor of the civilization Roman had reached its term. The visigodos, way romanizados, and under the reigns of Recaredo, Liuva II, Sisebuto and Chintila, between 586 and 640, would lead the city again, now Emínio , to the balance and prosperity.
In 711, the Muslen enter in the Peninsula and Coimbra is not forgotten. One changeds then under the domain àrabe into a Moorish city and moçárabe. The life elapses e tranquilamente, can say, that the region was valued with this presence of beyond-sea. With effect, the permanence of these men of dark tez brought important innovations, not only to the level of the introduction of new seeds and trees, as in the proper processes of culture and agrarian scanning.

In 878 the first attempts start of reconquer of the territory. The command fit to conde Hermenegildo Mendes who saw the glory to esvanecer itself in tobacco before the huge onslaught of Almançor in 987 stops in 1064 being, again, restituted to the cristãos commanded for Great Fernando. Coimbra renasce and changeds into the city most important the south of the Douro and is capital of a vast county governed for moçárabe Sesnando. Conde D. Henrique and queen D. Teresa makes of it its residence and, in the security of its walls, that one is born that would come to be the first king of Portugal - D. Afonso Enriques.


The national politics had also election place here. In Coimbra the cuts are reunem, being to detach of 1385 where João of the Rules - legitimately or not - takes to throne D. João I, Master of Avis. Á city was also on the tragedy, as many times sung in verse, of the death of Ines de Castro.

The Românico and the Gótico would come to raise in Coimbra constructions of undeniable beauty: Old Sé, Santiago, S. Salvador, Clara-a-Velha Saint. The artists choose Coimbra and here names parade as: Master Robert, Sundays Domingues, Pero Master, Diogo Pires Old and the Young man, Diogo de Castilho and as much others.

Century XVI brought the Coimbra the definitive installation of the University and the foundation of innumerable colleges that functioned as alternative to official education. It is to also point out in this period, the refreshing that if registou in the monastery of Santa Cruz, under it commands and the cultured vision of Frei Brás de Braga. Its name would have to be on to the aperture of the Street of the Sofia, its capital workmanship, where if they had concentrated innumerable colleges: of S. Miguel, Todos-os-Santos, S. Bernardo, the Carmo, the Favour, S. Pedro, S. Boaventura, etc.

Foreigners have that at this time they had worked in Coimbra and they if must the primícias of the new art that then became: Nicholas Chanterene, João of Ruão and Hodarte, are most significant.

The aspect of this Coimbra of Five hundred little will go to move until ends of century XIX Is certain that new houses, colleges, churches will be built, the University will grow, but the urban tracing will suffer few alterations.
In century XVII the first rocks of the churches of the Jesuits had been launchn (current New Sé), of S. Bento and the monastery of Clara-a-Nova Saint.


It has that to count, however, with an exception: the reforms operated for the Marquis of Pigeon house. Under the prompt of this politician, the walls of the castle disappear, create the Botanical Garden, become torn it square that has its name today and scratch out the buildings of the Museum of Natural History and the Chemistry laboratory.

Coimbra felt in the centúria of Eight hundred deep hashings. In a first phase, it suffers the agruras of the French Invasions aquando of the occupation of the city for the troops of Junot and Massena, later the civil war between liberal absolutists and e, in the decade of thirty, the extinguishing of the religious orders removed to the city great part of the religious houses that then made use.

In the second half of century XIX, Coimbra would recoup the lost alento. 1856 bring the electric telegraph to it and the illumination the gas, in 1864, is inaugurated the path-of-iron and, in 1875, railway bridge is constructed to it. We have thus in the end of the century, a millenarian city that hugs the progress of the modern age.

However the progress, for times, paid expensive and Coimbra paid a imerecido price. No longer our century, in the decade of 40, a part of the history of the city irremediavelmente is amputated. With effect, the almost full destruction of the High one for construction of the new university buildings had very removed the Coimbra of its history, of its tradition, its poetry.

Currently, Coimbra not pára its march in favor of the development and of the progress. We make votes so that this progress and the welfare population is not made to the barbarity cost as the ones that above had been focadas and Coimbra can look at the future without never taking off the eyes of its past and its history.

BACK to Coimbra