By the end of the year, Faro there will be another roof top that can be visited and then the one that provides the “best view” over the county. The Chapel of Santo António do Alto is receiving restoration work by the City Council. Faro and thanks to a winning project of the Participatory Budget of Portugal, will be streamlined and reopened to the public.
This winning project, proposed by Samanta Duarte and Ana Morgado, gave a “push” to the work, which was planned by the City Council, and complements the idea that the municipality had for that space.
In addition to the chapel, which was built in the XNUMXth century, the antonino museum, created in the XNUMXth century, will also be reopened, and it will be possible to climb to the top of the old watchtower tower, which gained a few meters when it was adapted, also in the century. past, to receive a water deposit.
In the past, this tower served as a lookout, to spot enemies entering the estuary. Starting this year, with the view it provides, it will serve to attract tourists.
The exterior restoration works started two weeks ago and were visited, this Friday, as part of the initiative “Faro Impact".
After a restoration of the interior of the hermitage, «we are now in the second phase of the project, with the work to recover the façades. Next, we go to the third phase, which involves the dynamization of this space», explained Rogério Bacalhau, president of the Chamber of Faro.
In this third phase, «it is necessary to create materials and make this space more dynamic. It is necessary to recover closed spaces, such as the antonino museum, which used to be here, so that, together with the two girls who competed for the OPP, we can have this space open to the public. By the end of this year, we hope to have the project fully completed».
If the exterior restoration works, which cost around 36 thousand euros, are in charge of the City Council, the dynamization project, in the amount of 70 thousand euros, will be financed by the OPP, through the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Algarve.
Marco Lopes, director of the Municipal Museum of Faro, considers that this is a «citizenship project of two townspeople from Faro interested in heritage, who made a project to dynamize a space that has lost its museum, tourist and visit functions to the viewpoint, which has an extraordinary view. It is the best view in the city of Faro».
For all these reasons, the official says that this «is a very important project, which we are following in the Museums Division. This is an extraordinary hermitage, for its architectural beauty and its past. What we want is for the space to become visitable and the objective is that these restorations will spread to other religious spaces in the municipality».
This is a space that, over the centuries, has had «various functions. It had military functions, being a lookout point for enemies who approached the village and, later, the city, and there is also the religious space", which "has a "cherry on top of the cake". There are still traces of the old hermitage, which dates back to the end of the XNUMXth century, which has an extraordinary Manueline vault, very well preserved, which will be part of the tour's itinerary», reveals Marco Lopes.
This vault was “hidden”, after the intervention that the chapel received in the XNUMXth century, which gave it “another amplitude and dimension. Baroque is just that. A very tall ship was created».
Among the reasons for the interest of the hermitage, «there is also this altarpiece that was made by one of the most renowned carvers from Faro», Manuel Martins. The construction of the building was ordered by the master mason Diogo Tavares, who also built the Igreja do Carmo. «It was an expensive work», guarantees Marco Lopes.
The works on the façade are being monitored by a restoration team from the Museum of Faro and its director gives an example of the importance of this accompaniment: “on the façade, there is a card with a written date of 1500 and something. Whoever was doing the restoration was, successively, putting lime, trying to understand what was there before. However, the real date, which should have been there, was 1754. It's only two centuries apart,” he jokes.
The chapel “is a work of local art”, adds Marcos Lopes. «We have the carving, the painting, the tiles, the vault… It is one of the most emblematic buildings in the city. It is this chapel that gives its name to Rua de Santo António, which, in the meantime, was “interrupted” by the construction of the school».
About the antonino museum, which existed on the site, the director of the Municipal Museum of Faro explains that the “stuffing that belonged to the museum went to our reserves. It was a decision of the time, in the late 90's, for safety reasons and for lack of visitors. The filling is with us and the idea is to return the filling, with another framework and other contents».
With a hermitage that is a «work of art», a view that is «the best in the city» and also a museum, Marcos Lopes is sure that this is a space that «has enormous potential from a tourist point of view. This place was even more visited than the Municipal Museum, in the late 60s and early 70s. It would have 10 thousand visitors a year».
Rogério Bacalhau agrees with the tourist potential of this monument, with its «spectacular viewpoint, with a view over the entire county. I think that only the Alto de Rhodes water tank will have a slightly higher quota. This building in front of here [the high school] was an urban attack. The avenue should reach here and the entire downtown area would have the view of the hermitage. If we went to high school today, there would be many voices against it. The hermitage lost a lot with this, it was hidden and lost some of its importance. What we are doing here is to recover the heritage that was being underused».
The mayor also thanks the mentors of the OPP winning project, because “if it weren't for these two young women, we wouldn't have the project working in this way. We had the idea of doing it, but the fact that there was the OPP accelerated it and that's a good thing», he concludes.
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