Santarém

Filipe Castro, Clara Brito, Rui Falcão de Campos and Miguel Soares Lopes

Introduction

This project started when a number of mid-19th century boats were exposed in Lisbon, in the place where the old Cais de Santarém was located, during the construction of a subterranean parking lot [see below].

The importance of Santarém as a fluvial and maritime landscape is not sufficiently studied, but the circumstances of its location, on a protected hill, looking over one of the most fertile plains in western Europe, and on the margins of Portugal’s largest river have inspired this study.

As with all the projects on this website, this one is intended to fuel the curiosity and interest of a wide public, both professional and amateur, and link it to scholarly publications and other projects that may be of interest to Santarém’s inhabitants, tourists, and scholars studying the last 28 centuries.

History of the Village

Probably built over a pre-historic settlement, the earliest archaeological remains date to the 8th century BCE and are related to the Phoenician occupation of the Tagus Estuary.

Excavations in the castle revealed a Roman temple and well preserved Roman ruins from the republican period.  Romans seem to have arrived in Santarém around 138 BCE, calling it Scalabi Castro. After the conquest of Iberia by Julius Caesar, around 60 BCE, the city was occupied by a stationed army, changing its name to Praesidium Juliia.  It may have been fortified in this period. The road connecting Lisbon to Astorga passed by Santarém and there are archaeological remains of this structure in Vale de Santarém, at Quinta do Malpique (Endovélico Ref. 7,347). The imperial strata were deeply impacted by the Arab occupation of the castle.

During the 5th century the Iberian Peninsula saw a pronounced decadence of the cities, the elites, and the civic activities. Invasions by Alans and Vandals probably impacted the city, which was eventually given to Roman general Sunieric, who conquered it with a Visigothic army (c. 460 CE). Santarém was conquered by the Suevi in 529 CE and later, in the 7th century, by Visigoths. During the period of the Visigothic invasions Scallabis was named Sancta Irene (or Iria).

It seems that Sancta Irene did not suffer most of the wars and violence that characterized the period of desegregation of the Roman order. Vandals, Alans, Suevi and Visigoths invaded the Iberian Peninsula and sacked and destroyed many of the most important cities.

There is not a lot of information about the city during this period, although the organic layout of the streets over most of the city suggests the destruction of the Roman village and a rather disorganized growth of the city before and during the Islamic occupation.

In 714 it was conquered by a Muslim army. The early city – now known as Shantarîn – may have been located in the alcáçova area, with a small neighborhood to the northeast, outside the walls, named Alcúdia, and another to west of Alcúdia, named Alpram. The original necropolis may have been located near Alpram. During the 8th and 9th centuries the alcáçova area was walled and reinforced with towers, and the city grew to the north, into the Marvila hill.

In the 11th century a new mosque was erected near the city’s sûq. By now the city had grown to 3,500 inhabitants and the main area was walled. The new necropolis was located on the west plateau. A new neighborhood to the north of Alcúdia, named Seserigo, connecting the higher city to the fluvial area and a wall is built to protect the new road of Atamarma. During this period a new neighborhood named Alfansi developed in a secondary waterfront area, and connected directly with the alcáçova through a steep road that ended at Porta do Sol and another that ran around the western city walls.

When the Christian invasions reached its surroundings, Shantarîn was a prosperous small city, surrounded by orchards, gardens, vegetable gardens, and vineyards. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries this relatively small city was conquered and lost by Christian warlords from Spain, and finally conquered in 1147 by Afonso Henriques, the first king of the newly created kingdom of Portugal.

The City

Today Santarém is a small city of about 30,000 people but it was once a prosperous center.  A series of political miscalculations (1824 and 1384), a tragic accident (1491), and three violent earthquakes (1531, 1755, and 1909) and  kept Santarém from fully developing its political influence.

The city location and the wealth it accumulated made Santarém a monumental city, perched over the Tagus River, one of the most important arteries of the country throughout its history.  An important part of its monuments still stands, sometimes relatively preserved, sometimes destroyed and reconstructed several times, and sometimes incorporated in more modern buildings, its walls reused for new functions in the constant evolution of the city life.

Cities are in constant evolution. Progress, fires, natural disasters such as earthquakes, war, economic crisis, and urban policies affect the way buildings are kept, abandoned, bought, rebuilt, how traffic flows and how people perceive their habitat and feel about it.  If we look close, many aspects of the lives of the people that made Santarém over a period of 28 centuries are attached to the city’s buildings, roads, gardens. History is the soul of a landscape, and the objective of this website if to try to make sense of the stories that made Santarém, based on historical and archaeological data.

We are trying to develop a GIS map of Santarém, organize the archaeological finds chronologically, and share the city’s history here. It is not easy to reconstruct Santarém. Change is a dynamic process. As mentioned above, erosion, earthquakes, fires, wars, economic cycles, all impacted the city’s organic growth and the mentality of the people that lived and died  in it.

The first step of such a project is a good assessment of the city’s material culture, from the Iron Age archaeological remains to the latest building, from the municipal edicts prohibiting the population from cutting the vegetation on the slopes around the old castle to the engineering works of the 20th century, illustrating the city’s long fight against the erosion of its slopes.

We are trying to inventory the city’s walls, doors, and towers, the roads and fluvial routes, the city’s water supplies, its convents, churches, palaces, houses, shops, roads, and gardens.

Below are presented some summary descriptions of some of Santarém’s most interesting constructions and spaces, or memories.  We have divided the city spaces as public and private, secular and religious:

Secular public spaces – Walls, doors, towers, roads, passages, squares, markets, and empty grounds; administrative spaces, and meeting places; commercial spaces such as shops; entertaining spaces such as theaters.

Secular private spaces – Industrial spaces such as kilns, workshops, wine production facilities, and storage buildings; elite domestic spaces; and non-elite domestic spaces.

Religious public places –  Temples, mosques, synagogues, churches, and chapels (ermitas).

Religious private places – Monasteries, convents, tombs, and altars.

City Walls, Doors, and Towers

The historic center of Santarém is clearly visible in the maps, and the shape of the walls that protected the village over the centuries can still be reconstructed along most of its extension.  Over time some of the doors and towers became old, or encumbered the city life and were demolished, or changed, or incorporated in newer buildings.

The Walls

Santarém was fortified probably already in Roman times, and certainly during the Arab occupation. Its walls were expanded, demolished and rebuilt several times, and it is not easy to reconstruct the several walls built over time.

The Doors

Most of the city’s old doors were demolished to let the carts, and then the cars into the historic center. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a number of these constructions were old and difficult to repair, and the city council saw them as obstacles to progress. A few survive, however, and we have a general ideal of the positions of others.

The Towers

Most of the towers mentioned in historic documents or deduced to have existed in the areas of the city doors have been demolished, for various reasons. Some were incorporated in other constructions, and a few are still standing.

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Most monasteries and several houses had underground cisterns, and several are still in existence.  We have inventoried ten so far, of which one was just reported at the time of its destruction, in the foundations of one of five buildings of Avenida 5 de Outubro.

A collection of coins found on this last cistern was partly donated to a museum in Coimbra and is inventoried, although we have not been able to locate it yet.

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Palaces

The most important palaces in Santarém were the old alcáçova palace, and the later royal palace, situated where now is the Seminary. Both these constructions have long been demolished.

A number of rich houses were built over the 28 centuries of the city’s existence. The most important standing is the palace – Eugénio da Silva – were today is located the municipality.

Palácio Eugénio da Silva

Built in the late 17th century outside the city walls by the Meneses family, its facade looked upon Largo do Espírito Santo.

Palácio Landal

Tradition places the birth of D. manuel de Souda Coutinho in 1555, a writer known as Frei Luis de Sousa.

Temples, Mosques, Churches, and Chapels

There is not a lot of information about locals of worship in Santarém prior to its conquest. The remains of a Roman temple have been surveyed in today’s Jardim das Portas dos Sol, the church of S. João Evangelista seem to have been built over a previous Visigothic temple, and scholars believe that the city’s mosque was located in the place where now stands the church of Marvila. In spite of its small population, Santarém had a large number of churches.

The Convents

Santarém was the most important center of a very rich agricultural center and its fertile soil maintained a number of religious orders.

There is an extensive record of purchases, sales, and donations of orchards and planted fields that provided for the religious orders established in Santarém after the conquest, in 1147.  [more]