Avoid "the false history" and "cause that the barrister tower does not become a forgery of itself". These are the basic assumptions for the conservation and restoration work on the albarra tower in the Castle of Paderne, in the municipality of Albufeira, which is now starting, to be ready within four months.
Budgeted at 132 euros, the intervention is just the first phase of the works programmed by the Regional Directorate of Culture for this monument classified as a Building of Public Interest.
«This first phase is more timid», explained Alexandra Gonçalves, regional director of Culture, during the signing of the contract awarding the work for the Conservation and Restoration of the Taipa Almóada Modules in Paderne Castle, which took place at the end of Friday afternoon. Tuesday, July 28th, at the monument.
In addition to the intervention itself, coordinated by the architect Manuel López Vicente, one of the world's leading specialists in the conservation of military rammed earth, this first phase also includes the production and publication of a monographic book about the Castle and the conservation work being carried out there. made.
The second phase, to start in 2018 and which will cost 460 thousand euros, refers to the conservation and restoration of the eastern walls, next to the Albarrã tower.
All of this is intended to guarantee that this monument, «built 900 years ago», can last for a few more centuries. Furthermore, as Natércia Magalhães, historian of the Regional Directorate of Culture, pointed out, it is «a case, almost unique at national level, for the Almohad structures», which «has come to us maintaining a single construction technique and the same design that it was given by its founders in the XNUMXth century».
This project, recalled the regional director of Culture, «has been in the portfolio for execution since 2010», but was always «blocked by the lack of funding to make the investment possible». Therefore, he underlined, the signing of the contract awarding the works on the Albarrã tower was a «moment of great emotion».
Is that the opening to carry out the work ended up appearing in 2016, when, "uniting the good will of all", it was possible to ensure that the 40% contribution was provided by the Municipality of Albufeira (20%) and by the Millennium bcp Foundation (the remaining 20%).
The remaining 60%, assumed by the Regional Directorate of Culture, were successfully applied for the European funds of CRESC Algarve 2020. «We are the owner of the work, but the money does not come from the Regional Directorate of Culture», said Alexandra. Gonçalves.
The candidacy, explained Natércia Magalhães, “integrates the valorization of this heritage, but also the execution of a prestigious book about the Castle of Paderne”, which is “ex-libris of a construction process and of a Muslim empire, a Berber caliphate of Maghreb origin, which for a century stretched between the two shores of the Mediterranean and left traces like this on them».
Fernando Nogueira, president of the Millennium bcp Foundation, an entity that ensures 20% of the investment needed in this first phase of the work, also present at the ceremony, stressed that the works are a «moment that respects history and prepares the future».
«In Portugal, there is starting to be a significant row of companies in the recovery of heritage», he underlined, referring to the company In Situ Conservação de Bens Culturais Lda, to which the specialized work was awarded after a tender. «In Situ will want to show with great pride the beautiful work it is going to do here», he said.
«Culture, up to this level, can promote the creation of jobs», added Fernando Nogueira. Alexandra Gonçalves, for her part, stressed that «culture and heritage are fundamental for the competitiveness of tourism».
Carlos Silva e Sousa, mayor of Albufeira, expressed his "great joy" for being "moving positively in a heritage that is unique in the country".
The albarrã (massive) tower of the Castle of Paderne, which is the symbol of this monument, presents a series of diseases, pathologies that «put at risk the continuity of the tower as a historical heritage». There are areas to break up, where the resistant Almoáda military rammed earth has lost mass, "grain after grain", with the help of rain, wind, organic matter and even plants whose roots invade the rammed earth, there are cracks opening and furrows widening and sections of facings that threaten to fall out.
To repair these diseases in the monument that is nine centuries old, and contrary to what was done a few decades ago, it is not going to use strange materials, but mud again. The objective is to restore the so-called “skin of the monument” and “reanimate its heritage value with new cultural uses, namely the enjoyment and visit to the top” of the Albarran tower.
Attending the awarding ceremony for the work was Elidérico Viegas, president of the Association of Hotels and Touristic Enterprises of the Algarve (AHETA), who, having been born and lived as a child nearby, took the opportunity to remember the times when, with the brother and friends, he went up to the castle to see the nests of crows and owls that there were then, in abundance. "At that time there was no road up here, we were going up the slope through the woods," he recalled.
The castle
The castle is shaped like an irregular 10-sided polygon, which forms an almost trapezoidal shape.
It is oriented in the bisector of the NE quadrant, in coherence with the topography of the place and the shape and orientation of the boll where it is implanted.
The most notable features of the enclosure are the massive use of rammed earth as a constructive system and the inexistence of corner or intermediate towers, with the presence of a single albarrã tower.
Perhaps because it is a small-scale fortress, located in such a steep place, the breaking of the walls is a sufficient defensive resource to compensate for the lack of towers. Military architecture has the characteristic of being completely rational, in the sense that there is no waste in the means to guarantee the ends.
Of course, the amber tower, advanced in relation to the wall, flanks the NE stretch, which is the most accessible and vulnerable of all.
A single access door to the enclosure opens directly to the outside, in the cubit of the NE elevation. Curiously, it does not correspond to the preferred Almohad typology, which was the elbow door.
The interior of the fortress corresponds to 2.557 m2. As a curiosity, applying a conventional calculation that determines 2m2 of free space per person, as the capacity of a shopping center is currently calculated, this enclosure could house almost a thousand and a half people, at times of maximum occupancy, without knowing if the resources food and water would be guaranteed for so many people.
The tower
It is a single-body massive tower with a floor or an upper terrace accessible from the general adarve.
The plan is an almost square quadrilateral, whose sides are round 5,85 meters. The current maximum height is 9,30 meters.
The module used in its design and construction seems to fit the common almohad cubit of 0,418 meters. The use of this module is verified in the Tower in the height of boxes (2 cubits) and in the width at the base (14 cubits).
The height of the tower is currently formed by a succession of eleven rows or modules of mudflats, nine that form the body of the tower and the last two, very degraded, form the parapet of the terrace. There are no longer any traces of battlements. Next to the soil, on a compacted base, there is a modulus level in rammed earth (with higher lime content and coarse agglomerate).
Access to the tower terrace is through a span to the center of the SW face, from the general parade, through the bridge whose barrel vault starts at the lower level of module 6 in a simple impost.
On the floor of the walkway, it seems that there was a gap/opening to hit the lower part of the bridge.
The terrace parapets show significant mass losses and are very eroded. There are no traces of battlements and the parapet has completely disappeared on the NW side and O corner.
In the center of the tower, there were remains of an intermediate transverse wall that divided the terrace into two spaces.
On the floor of both spaces there are traces of a possible wooden structure and certain holes in the floor, like silos for ammunition or equipment.
However, all these archaeological remains do not allow to form an image of the finish of the tower terrace beyond the parapet.
rammed earth
Taipa is a construction technique of remote origin, extended throughout the Mediterranean area since antiquity, especially in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.
Today, this traditional construction technique is recognized as an international cultural heritage and its applications in bioclimatic architecture are being studied.
Basically, it consists of crushing a conglomerate of granules, more or less selected earth and lime in different proportions, depending on their use and function, ranging from the most modest domestic architecture to powerful walls. In this case, in Portugal it is specifically called “military rammed earth”, which are characterized by their high lime content and the careful composition of the mixture, in addition to their thickness.
The mass obtained from this mixture, slightly moistened with water, is put to work using wooden formworks called ramparts, where it is poured and compacted manually, mechanically, using a mallet. Once a module is finished, the walls are removed immediately, placed in continuation or on top, to continue the fabric.
The composition of the soil mix plays an important role. The earth used as a building material must contain a portion of clay to ensure cohesion and enough sand to give the wall an internal skeleton. A good earth for making rammed earth should contain less than 30% clay and silt and more than 35% sand. Gravel content should range between 10-20%.
The construction system includes wooden elements embedded in the wall at intervals to hold the formwork and absorb horizontal efforts during compaction.
These wooden elements embedded in the wall are called needles, and it was their disappearance over the centuries that gave way to the metrically arranged holes in the Almohad rammed walls, which are their exclusive mark.
Photos: Elisabete Rodrigues|Sul Informação
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