Chronicle of a death foretold : o r when a National Monument fails its status

Na medida em que todas as obras da UC Digitalis se encontram protegidas pelo Código do Direito de Autor e Direitos Conexos e demais legislação aplicável, toda a cópia, parcial ou total, deste documento, nos casos em que é legalmente admitida, deverá conter ou fazer-se acompanhar por este aviso. Chronicle of a death foretold: o r when a National Monument fails its status Autor(es): Campos, Joana Capela de; Murtinho, Vitor Publicado por: Editorial do Departamento de Arquitetura URL persistente: URI:http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/39952 DOI: DOI:https://doi.org/10.14195/1647-8681_6_18

Joana Capela de Campos, Vitor Murtinho Chronicle of a death foretold.Or when a National Monument fails its status.

CES, DARQ, UC, PORTUGAL
The main goal of every heritage application is to achieve a nomination status to safeguard a property and guarantee its protection so that future generations may inherit some important values that contributed to creating a collective identity.However, that legacy depends on how and what should be protected, which implies a previous selection, which means a policy.To achieve this, any approach to classify a property should be based on a collective reflection about its significance.So, a patrimonial nomination is a juridical and legal status that attributes a value to a place as "heritage".Nevertheless, that title may not be sufficient to guarantee the property's most appropriate recognition, understanding or even appreciation of those who manage it, who use it.
The aim of this article is to study the quality of the declassification decision approved concerning the Church of São Domingos (Capela-Mor), in Coimbra.It had been a National Monument since 1910, with a part included within the limits of the property nominated World Heritage by unesCo, on the 22 nd of June, 2013.
To achieve that purpose, this work intends to analyse the chronicles of the technical and the historical process by examining them in relation to some pertinent texts that have contributed to the evolution of the concepts and the practices in the field of heritage.
It is not this paper's intention to judge the decisions that were taken and justified technically and then accepted by those with the highest political responsibility.But it is this work's intention to study this process so that heritage players may be better prepared to confront and deal with similar situations in the future.Heritage is a profitable resource that should be promoted and it is the community, in this case, the global one, that could lose the attributed value status by a longpredicted death.
In this sense, it is our understanding that the most responsible stakeholders, such as the community itself, should be more vigilant for the future, because its common responsibility to pass on a value that was important for the creation of their cultural identity in the past, that it is still important and should, presumably, be important tomorrow.
For centuries, powerful people have demonstrated their supremacy through their wealth and magnanimous donations of impressive buildings or works of art to the community (Ortigão, 2006, p. 9).This was the case of the Church of São Domingos (Csd), in Rua da Sofia 1 , in Coimbra, that began with the royal sponsorship and monetary resources of a patron of the arts.However, when this sponsorship ran out, the church was still incomplete.
Since the late 16 th century, when the first period of the construction of the church stopped in the transept 2 , no efforts that are known of were made to finish it.With the decree of 30.05.1834, the College of São Domingos was nationalized and then sold to private owners, which marked the start of a period of abandonment, continuous .1910that included it on the National Monument (nM) List.Isidoro de Almeida's unfinished project did not benefit from the legal instruments and mechanisms necessary to protect it until this decree, and so it became dependent on its luck and its functional role (which was, most of the time, the main guarantee for the maintenance of the building).However, the text of the decree was ambiguous due to the fact that the object defined as nM, was the sanctuary (capela-mor).This left the part considered most precious, the chapel of João de Ruão, without protection because there was no protection zone in force around the classified object at that time.This pertinent issue was solved on 20.06.1923, with the Decree 8938 that classified the Tesoureiro Chapel as a national monument.
In 1924, Urbano proposed a plan for the lower part of the city, the Baixinha of Coimbra 3 , promoted by the local authorities and which recommended revising the layout of the streets in this part of the city, particularly by making the Csd the right corner of a new street perpendicular to Rua da Sofia.The demolition of the buildings adjacent to the Csd, which served as supports for the wall, mainly on the north side (Fig. 1), became a determinant factor for the fast obsolescence of the building (Gonçalves, 1984b, p. 309).This meant that the new street, named João de Ruão 4 , despite the good intention of providing a new urban context for the Csd 5 , was simultaneously the main reason for its eventual state of ruin.This was why the Tesoureiro Chapel was relocated since its fortunes could not have been worse as it was being used as a bus garage (Correia & Gonçalves, 1947, p. 88) (Fig. 2).In fact, the present façade on Rua João de Ruão, which should correspond to the transept of the Csd, was constructed after the opening of this artery.With the construction of the street and also the demolition of its adjacent buildings, the previously hidden façade, which was now exposed, comprised of only a doorway corresponding to the first floor of the demolished building and an upper oculus which still exists today (Fig. 3).
After many events since 1940 6 and due to the need to safeguard and conserve the Csd, which was very likely to collapse 7 and the pressure from the media 8 , the local section of the dgeMn Direcção Geral dos Edifícios e Monumentos Nacionais (The Authority for National Monuments and Buildings) also considered the possibility of changing its use as a bus parking garage and the relocation of the Tesoureiro Chapel 9 .
Given the difficulties of a successful conservation process for the building, the solution proposed was to sell it to some entity with the financial resources necessary to maintain it.In this way, the new owner would be responsible for preserving the Tesoureiro Chapel, which was not in the best of states due to the loss of value as a consequence of poor maintenance 10 .Some institutions assumed their interest in taking care of the chapel 11 and after 1961, there was a proposal to dismantle the chapel and store it in the museum, Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro (MnMC) 12 .It would then be reconstructed later either on the property of the MnMC, or in Park of Santa Cruz.Its integration in a religious building planned under the jurisdiction of the diocese 13 was also considered.
This last hypothesis was considered strategic because, if the chapel was integrated in the new religious centre of Montes Claros it could maintain its baptismal function but would remain conditioned by approval of the dgeMn 14 to any future alterations and any costs would have to be supported by the owner 15 .However, it was concluded that the diocese was unable to reach this main objective, despite architect Amoroso Lopes' ante project 16 and several efforts to achieve this goal.In the meantime, the chapel was, in fact, dismantled and placed at the Montes Claros centre.On 06.02.1965 a study was commissioned to determine its implantation in the museum MnMC 17 , which started on 18.05.1966 18.The relocation of the chapel was problematic for reasons that have been discussed previously, namely the declassification of the Csd.This position was officially assumed by the local branch of the dgeMn, on 10.04.1967 19 .On 25.08.1967, the loss of the Tesoureiro Chapel protection zone was confirmed due to its relocation in the MnMC facilities 20 .
With Decree n. 516 / 1971, Rua da Sofia was classified as being of Public Interest; simultaneously, and, in the same legal document, the Tesoureiro Chapel was removed from the nM List.On the one hand, it is quite clear that, taking into consideration its new location in the MnMC facilities and its new role as part of the contents of a museum, its protection classification was no longer needed.On the other hand, the transfer of the Tesoureiro Chapel from the Csd has opened several wounds within the community, which will be difficult to heal, thus creating an even more difficult process to safeguard its patrimonial value.This lengthy process resulted in a situation in which the private owners, who then owned the chapel and must finance it, had the opportunity to alter the function and the use of the Csd building 21 .
It is not strange then that, on 11.05.1978 22, a request for authorization to build on the Csd 23 plot was presented to the local authorities.This process suffered various alterations over 11 years 24 , with areas being projected for a shopping centre, a car park and offices in order to maximize the land use to achieve the best economic income.
On 30.08.1978 25 , documents were provided to illustrate and clarify the project, such as photographs and a description of the materials and colours to be used in the façade 26 .The document states that there would be an effort to reproduce the coat of arms of the Dukes of Aveiro as well as the Santiago Cross 27 , to be integrated in the present principal façade, in Rua da Sofia, even though it was not the original one.This was considered essential to a holistic understanding of the Csd 28 .Compliance with technical advice was also confirmed providing the proposed implementation of anodized aluminium frames, better for conservation than wood 29 , were rejected.
The local authorities left the responsibility for the decision to the Direcção Geral do Património Cultural 30 (dgpC) which assumed, in a technical report of 11.01.1979 31 , that while the principle for the building reconstruction could be considered valid, with a diversity of architectural grammar and assuming the contemporary date of the intervention, as defined in the 11th article of the Venice Charter of 1964 (Lopes & Correia, 2004), the best conditions to safeguard and valorise the former construction were not guaranteed, as they should be.Taking into consideration Brandi's conception of the unity of a work (Brandi,  2006, p. 16) and its missing parts (Brandi, 2006, p. 19), which disrupt the understanding of the unity of the work, the dgpC did not support the project and study presented.At the time, it was considered a formal hybrid that did not contribute to the desired unity of the building by taking into account the new parts of the proposed construction and their integration within the existing parts of the Csd.Nor was it integrated within its urban context and even its façade facing on to Rua João de Ruão, would need to be redesigned 32 .
However, following a decision by the local authorities, on 27.03.1981, the process was granted by order 33 without any other information, indicating a deviant procedure, since an official statement from the dgeMn 34 was expected concerning some of the doubts on the part of the local council members.Nevertheless, its initial license was deferred under number 728 35 .From that date on and until 1989, information concerning the requirements relating to technical inspections by entities was exchanged, the last one on 07.04.1989 36 , which indicated that the work had been constructed according to the approved project 37 (Fig. 4).In the course of the classification process of the University of Coimbra -Alta and Sofia (uC-as) as World Heritage of unesCo, which was achieved on 22.06.2013 38, where the Csd was part of its protection zone, the Regional Entity for Culture, the Direcção Regional de Cultura do Centro 39 (drCC), initiated on 27.11.2013 the disqualification process 40 that took into account all the work that had been done and which decharacterised the Csd.Further, the surroundings of the church were considered sufficiently safeguarded due to the classification of the Rua da Sofia, which is included in the Provisional Special Protection Zone of the nM uC-as published on 02.01.2014 41 .This decision concerning the disqualification of the "Csd (capella-mor) unfinished" taken by the Secretary of Culture 42 was published on 13.04.2015 43.
On 17.12.2014, the National Council of Culture proceeded to analyse the declassification process.In that meeting, the arguments were similar to those of the drCC, the circumstances that had lead to the systematic process of dilapidation of the church's contents, emphasising that the importance of composition inherent in this chapel, patent in the structure in terms of columns and capitels, among other things, increased the rarity of the same in terms of other remaining examples and therefore entails the need to pay particular attention to any rehabilitation intervention 44 , concluding that what was left of its capela-mor is completely altered, nothing left of the temple beyond the outer wall, although modified 45 .The next day, the dgpC accepted this argumentation.
As all the formalities were exhausted, on the 01.04.2015 46 , the Secretary of State for Culture declassified the Csd as an nM, but its safeguard was that it was included, as well as the Chapel of Jesus (located on the right of the main altar of the church), under the classification of public interest of Rua da Sofia and as it also entered in a special area of protection of uC-as, classified as nM and World Heritage.
On the 01.04.2015 (April fool's day), a truth became evident.The outcome had, perhaps, always been predictable and mirrors how a potentially responsible management of heritage was reduced, in this case, to a secondary role.This was proved conclusively by the evident passivity displayed in the acceptance of the disqualification of the patrimony.This whole process tells the story that led to the death of a monument that, in essence, if it had been protected would, today, mark a turning point in the Portuguese history of the Renaissance.
It is a terrible shame that this monument has not been used in a way, or given the respect that its historic or artistic character deserves, to ensure its duration until today 47 .In light of the Venice Charter (Lopes & Correia, 2004), transferring part of the monument such as the Tesoureiro Chapel (Fig. 5) should never have been allowed since

1.
Plan of the Church of São Domingos with the demolition of the buildings on the north side to construct the new street.Image: IHRUand acts of maintenance and conservation.This continued until the decree of 16.06.1910,published on 23.06