History and Heritage
MARVÃO
- Between transformation and change -
Among the almost skeletal soils bordering the Tagus River and the great mountains of S. Mamede, the Municipality of Marvão, marked by lush northern granite outcrops and the fertile valley of Aramenha, which delimits the South, has always depended on the waters of the River Sever, that separates the lands of Spain by the spring and which justified the first establishments humans in this region. In contrast to the dry plains of the Alentejo another, the narrow valleys of the foothills north of Marvão offer light, well drained soil softened by a micro climate that enabled the human settlement since very early times. On the southern slope, the valley is wider and the land of sand give way to heavy clay soils that the Romans did not forget. Between these two natural areas emerge in the quartzite ridge high and washed the fortified walls of Marvão. But the reasons why men over several centuries, to invest in that craggy hill that we find in archaeological sites that surround it.
The earliest human communities, during the Paleolithic, the lush valleys looked drained by permanent water courses. In the Municipality of Marvão the banks of the River Sever the scene were elected. Where the river runs less embedded, especially in the northern area of the municipality where the Sever spreads out more, or writhing around some geological accident, it is not difficult to find evidence of Palaeolithic artefacts from communities Final. In the gravel of the Mother-Old Hit the beaches and Amoreiras, or between large outcrops Vidais, chipped stone tools testify as communities of gatherers / hunters sought the banks of the River Sever to gain their livelihood.
When agriculture began to take its first steps and rehearsed the sedentary man, seeking shelter with few natural defenses, but not far from the environments that their ancestors from which elected and partly still relied on the large granite formations of the current county Marvão, not far from the always available Sever, serve as a habitat for communities of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the same. The villages Pombais, beat, and especially retort Vidais are clear examples of this occupation. But it is in Vidais, probably because it is the most studied, the material evidence pointing to a long and continuous occupation. And it is this environment of communities that gradually changed from an economy by gathering a production based on agriculture and pastoralism, which emerged megalithic manifestations. On gentle slopes, mostly facing the River Sever, sometimes disguised among the large granite outcrops, small valleys dominating the other, the source of livelihood of its builders, twenty-five dolmens monumental for the first time, the rugged landscapes of Marvão. In contrast to the much fiddling, raped, or even excavated the neighboring counties of dolmens, megalithic monuments of the characteristics of the county’s funeral Marvão because, intentionally forgotten, appear as one of the few scientific reserves of Portugal. Ainda que volumetricamente não se enquadrem entre as de maiores dimensões, as antas de Marvão são o reflexo de uma economia onde os excedentes não seriam muito abundantes, mas suficientes para possibilitarem aos seus construtores o tempo ea conjugação de esforços para a necropolização da paisagem. Although volumetrically not fit between the larger, tapirs Marvão are a reflection of an economy where the surplus would not be very plentiful, but sufficient to make possible their builders time and joint efforts to necropolização landscape. Algumas, sabiamente reaproveitadas, mas respeitadas ao longo dos milénios, chegaram até nós inseridas em estruturas agrícolas. Some wisely reused, but met over the millennia, have come to us embedded in agricultural structures. These distant 3rd and 4th millennia BC are known in the area of the county Marvão, besides twenty-seven dolmens, menhirs three. Of these, two are conserved in situ, part of a third guard in the Municipal Museum. The hundred and forty inches of Water menhir of Cuba, probably the smallest known isolation contrasts with the Lofts, carved directly into a natural outcrop, whose height exceeds three meters.
Orientalia when the influences are beginning to be felt more and metallurgy blunts this Alentejo communities which until then were established in low-elevation habitats are now seeking higher altitudes and naturally protected and Marvão County is no exception to this rule. Habitats overlooking the River Sever are abandoned and the tops of the hills began to be fortified. Since the end of the Chalcolithic until the arrival of the Romans strategic points of the main ridge lines become spaces of human experience. Castle Vidago, the Magistrate’s testimony and the belief these difficult times we lived near Marvão. One or more lines of walls surrounding these habitats. Houses square, or round, once probably covered with broom attach themselves to each other enjoying the best of the little space that protected the walls.
The crest that supports Quartz Marvão seems to be part in this type of strategy, especially the communities have adopted the second Iron Age, both in the area of the county and across the Marvão S. Mamede.
With the arrival of the Romans, another page gets to be written in the lands of Marvão. The communities that survived the cliffs mountains descend into the valleys again. By force of arms than their own volition, as archaeological remains and the show at Castle Vidago, habitats fortified Iron Age and succumb to the land better suited to agriculture began to be intensively explored. Several couples villae and agricultural reshaping the landscape of Marvão. Porto da Espada, Lofts, Pereiro, Amoreiras, Exclusion, Garreancho among several other smaller sites are occupied by Roman farms. Lavish homes coated with mosaics, large warehouses, mills and spa indicate the wealth that the Romans knew how to remove land now occupied by them. In the Valley of Aramenha in heavy soils and fertile, where water abounds, the beginning of the century, the Romans installed a new city. Ammaia was called. More than a great cosmopolitan center, it is now recognized that Ammaia have been a city of leisure, the big satellite Merida. Here, they constructed Emeritensis their vacation homes. For wealthy Romans flocked here in the relentless summer in search of shade and water, the vast city from the inside not rendered. Here in Ammaia, bordered by the River Sever and fueled by at least three springs that the Romans knew how to drive to downtown, watched theatrical performances against the backdrop of the brutal accident that sustains today Marvão. The influential and powerful robins who were vacationing in Ammaia quickly become political and architecturally. Shortly after its founding, the time of Claudius, receives the category of Civitas, a few years later, with Mr. Nero of Rome, ascends the Municipium. In parallel, and by virtue of its prestige and class, the Ammaia recently founded, attends the reorganization and beautification. Large squares, opulent doors, more symbolic than functional, a large forum, the middle of which rises a temple to the imperial cult, embody the influence and power of its inhabitants. No defensive concerns, because the Roman peace there, succumbs to the disorganization of the empire and the arrival of the barbarians. Between V and IX century, already in decline, a cataclysm, probably overtopping a dam that would enhance the water supply to the city, covers mainly the lower part of Ammaia with a sea of mud and rocks swept away by the waters uncontrollable . Only the walls stand taller and stronger of the unexpected and rapid ground in the city.
With the decline of the Roman political structure, we are witnessing, at least in the area of the county Marvão a swarm of small housing units deployed in areas well concealed in the landscape. The instability we are experiencing since the fifth century practically until the time of the Christian reconquest have contributed to the further reorganization in the occupation of the territory’s current county of Marvão. More than a score of towns, some roads torn by, attributable to the High Middle Ages, spread, especially among the large granite outcrops that mark the landscape of the northern slopes of the Sierra de Marvão. But the large training that supports Quartz Marvão seems to have been oblivious to all these and other episodes.
Although, to date, and for various reasons no systematic archaeological research would have developed in the urban Marvão, especially by the expected low power of soils in the inner castle and the extensive remodeling done in the forties of this century, however, there are small places, especially in the last defensive stronghold that could, once exceeded the strata of rubble, provide information to help clarify the more remote stages of human occupation of the hill Marvão. It seems the area around the small tank that which, either by written documentation, such as by the logic of human occupation of S. Mamede, which has initially been humanized.
Today it is accepted as certain that the oldest document related Marvão is the chronicle of Isa ibn Ahmad ar-Razi, dated from the tenth century, which reads: Monte de Amaia, known today by Ibn Maruán Amaia is a high and impregnable hill, east of the city of Amaia-the-ruins, situated on the River Sever. As the author tells us that same text, probably based on chronicles of the late ninth century on the activities of Ibn Maruán war, there would be a fortress Ammaia-the-Hill. This fortress that such talks could be chronically concerned with the Arab tower that rises over one of the defensive towers of the port city of East Ammaia, however, not the ruins of Ammaia are located on a hill, this tower would provide neither the defense capacity Ibn Maruán sought. The environment of conflict generated by the autonomic manifestations of Ibn muladi Maruán, would force him to seek refuge with defensive capabilities that the valley of Ammaia not offer. It thus seems clear that the hill overlooking the Sever, near the Ruins-of-Amaia, is what sustains the town today Marvão and named after him that there had built a fortress in the late ninth century. At least that date, and based solely on written documentation, it could be argued that the hill Marvão defensive structures were raised. However, having regard to the strategy of human occupation in S. Mamede, we found that the most remarkable hills surrounding the massive central and wide visual field on the surrounding heights, which falls between the current town of Marvão all have traces occupancy attributable to the Iron Age.
Although only a few fragments of pottery from the Iron Age have been found in the hill Marvão may already indicate that this location in the higher elevation has been raised in time before the fortification of Ibn Maruán, some habitat pre-Roman, which survived until the Romans. Mamede were searched and preferably in clay soils of Aramenha if he had founded the city of Ammaia without major defensive concerns, in periods of greater instability, the Roman garrisons would seek at least create some points watchman to protect their civitas. The hill Marvão it configured, therefore, an ideal place for deployment of any military structure. If no building tradition of defensive pre-existed at the time of Ibn Maruán, on the hill where it came to raising their strength, are difficult to explain the choice of this place, considering that there are other nearby hills that afford him similar defenses and same time the water necessary for survival in case of siege. Solving the problem of water shortage in the inhospitable outcropping quartzite may have been solved by the people of Ibn Maruán with the construction of any tank, to collect and conserve rainwater. A pequena cisterna situada no interior do principal reduto defensivo de Marvão, junto à actual torre de menagem, poderá remontar as suas origens ao século IX, embora apresente claros sinais de trabalhos de reconfiguração na Idade Média. The small tank located inside the main bastion of defensive Marvão, near the current tower, its origins can be traced to the ninth century, while showing clear signs of reconfiguration work in the Middle Ages.
After the periods of greatest instability, marked by the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the barbarians, with Islamic rule the human landscape of the county Marvão watching another turning point. Gradually the small townships that formed with the disorganization of the Roman structure begin to be abandoned and the people flock to the new fortification founded by Ibn Maruán.
With the conquest and refortification Marvão, the knights of Christendom, we are witnessing, then, the gradual abandonment of most of these habitats in the High Middle Ages. Marvão have called themselves at that time, the people who, somewhat scattered, small valleys occupied since the decline of the Roman Empire, becoming thus one of the most important fortified spaces south of the Tagus during the First Dynasty .
After the troubled times of the Reconquista, Marvão will keep lookout over the nearby Castile, being, above all, as a military space. The settlement will depend on the area immediately surrounding natural resources. To the south in the valley of Aramenha, clay soils with good agricultural potential and drained by the River Sever, the Ribeira do Porto da Ribeira and the Sword of Trout, see reborn quickly the economy. The multiple wind and water mills, of medieval origin, bear witness to this economic prosperity. For here was going to Spain and here we were charging the rights d’El Rei In the area of natural passage in the base of a cliff crowned by the fortress of Marvão, will install a toll and Customs Marvão. Of whom passed through here, or went to Castile, and paid their taxes here. In this transition zone, surrounded by fertile land in the Prado, land d ‘El Rei, is also exploring the much needed lime. In the late Middle Ages the valley was already the major economic center of the space that would conform to the current county Marvão.
Saviour of the World Aramenha, small urban center born from the ruins of the old Ammaia, remount the Middle Ages, living off nuts, wheat, trout and many grinding mills that lined the main watercourse. At the bottom of the Prado d’El Rei, alongside the walls of the gutters, halfway to Castelo de Vide, install them if they pull out the limestone famous lime. Born here, hidden among the hills and the mantle of chestnut trees, the village of Exclusion, a land of gutters. Toward the outer lane, at the edge of the fertile valley of Aramenha and exposed to the setting sun, the houses of the Sword Gate, reborn from the ruins of a Roman villa. On the other side of the mountain, the other leaning over zone, Penhas Port Roque, the town grew from Gallegos. Bordering the Castilian chapel and convent of the Order of St. Peter of Alcantara legend has it that people settled here in North America, Gallegos. Were meant to occupy uninhabited land up there and avoid the boundary line to retreat to the River Sever. Early lived more with the people across the lane than with the people of Marvão. Do comércio viviam e continuaram a viver. Trade continued to live and lived.
In the northern foothills of the Sierra de Marvão, where life was more difficult than ever, the man had to learn to steal the mantle of granite valleys where rye and barley grown. In short terraces and olive trees planted between the stones, which persisted in some grass grow, fed goats. There more to the bands of Spain the ground flattens out before toppling into the waters of Sever. Here, through small patches of oaks, some farm animals completed the economies of these nations. Living the few resources that gave the land early in the Spring, the people gathered around the shrine of St. Mark, patron of animals with horns. In a short plateau created by the sand that the wind and rain swept over the top there, built the little chapel where they offered, in symbolic sacrifice, the most beautiful calf. Chegava Abril, era dia de S.Marcos, era o dia 25. He arrived in April, was the feast of Saint Mark, was the 25th. They were overly sowing and harvest was hope that the rewarding led the people in the party, to meet and pray. A feira era necessária. The fair was needed. It was time to garnish with what they had at home. The months of hunger and approached only there to St. Michael in September, when newspapers were paid and the grain in the barn is returning to meet and thank this saint to another. Around the old chapel of St. Mark’s one, the one, the houses began to cluster. The chapel was already too small for. He built up another, more up there in the mound of sand, this invocation of St. Anthony. And the festival also moved. Gradually, the cluster’s center reorganized around the new church. Mark was born Santo Antonio das Areias. Around the old chapel, since the late nineteenth century, built the cemetery. In the twenties of this century the holy ground was already insufficient. Opened the new, then to the sides of the Source of Condesso and shortly afterwards, the graves and the old chapel gave way to new homes, disappearing forever the original church of St. Mark.
By the end of the War of Restoration of the county Marvão lived in constant fear. First, the episodes of the Reconquista, then the blurring of boundaries, but the greater instability experienced during the post 1640. The constant skirmishes between the two countries led to a significant loss of population. Manufactures of cloths that since the late fifteenth century came to installing the shores of Sever been disabled. The rural people have migrated to more peaceful lands. The whole economy has declined in municipalities. Pacified the border, we are witnessing the gradual return of economic life in the county. Reflection of the mercantilist policy of the Reign of King Joseph, install themselves, especially in the vicinity of toll and over Sever manufactures various satellites of the Royal Manufactory of Portalegre. The extraction of lime required for reconfiguration, particularly in Portalegre and Castelo de Vide receives a strong increase. The county’s population increases and the fields produce grain that is transformed into dozens of windmills and water mills that are established along the whole river.
In time of peace is seeing a population increase over the term of the Plaza de Marvão. Aramenha Salvador and Santo Antonio das Areias feature a soaring population, while the gates come out fortified their residents. Salvador almost a tripling of the population and Santo Antonio das Areias, from 1758 to 1864, quadruples. Rather, the 1980 inhabitants living in Marvão in 1527 fall to 1758 1167em. In 1911 the parish of Santa Maria Marvão, which is attached, however the St. James, had 329 fires, while the Santo Antonio das Areias and S. Salvador de Aramenha subiam, qualquer das duas, para 634. Salvador Aramenha rose, any of them, to 634.
With the construction of Ramal de Cáceres and the Railway Station, comes a new town, border, representing the parish in the forties. Especially during the Second World War, this new village you see a rapid development. The main link from Lisbon to the rest of Europe was mainly here. The customs, the various police officers and staff of Railways took up residence here. Four miles north, at Herdade do Pereiro, not far from the Thermal Waters of Fadagosa, a large agricultural complex and transformer is installed, creating new town, only private. But after less than fifty years, breaks down and almost disappears.
In the fifties, while Marvão is ruined, in Santo Antonio das Areias install in various industries. First the canning plant, then the chocolate and almonds and finally the shoe. For people flock here from all over the district. Housing estates are built, the purchasing power increases and the trade develops. Across the mountains, the land of Aramenha farming maintains the normal pace but, resenting with the flight of people to the factories of San Antonio.
This industrial and commercial glow of Santo António das Areias remains until the mid seventies. The main market for products manufactured in this village were the colonies. With its independence, a, a, factories closed, or drastically reduce production. Unemployment is widespread. Those who had more than two generations had come, now go away and trade is suffering.
The village of Beira has, for over ten years, its stability, based on services that involve the border. But the entry of Portugal into the European Union will give a strong shock in the economy of this parish. The boundaries are gone and trains, in ever smaller numbers, also no longer stop. The people of the Customs and Fiscal Guard disappear. And the premises of the CP, semi-abandoned, moisture and rot occupy the places of first. Just get old. Those who know and can still seek employment elsewhere.
On the other side of the mountain, those who live from agriculture also resent, but resist. Who could not resist the new technologies were lime kilns of Exclusion. Cement and paint are no longer selling to the black and white lime Exclusion. The furnaces, from the fifties who no longer smoke.
With the opening of the borders of the Galician village no longer the great emporium that characterized it. Smuggling is not. Trades, one by one, close.
The Spanish neighbors, with their enhanced purchasing power, invading, especially the week-ends, small restaurants that abound along the banks of the Sever. The ESP will become and investment is reflected in new buildings that cluster around the old bridge toll. Pleasant site, which has sought the Romans, gradually becomes the new center of the county. In the green of El Prado and was later King of Iria Gonçalves, mother of D. Nuno Álvares Pereira, Nuno Alvares Pereira, animals no longer graze. Several holes on the large lawn, attract people from everywhere to try to introduce them white balls. Those who do not know these games and especially those who can not feast on summer afternoons in the heated waters of streams and limpid pool of river tolls.
There to the sides of where the bridge to the toll was brought in half a century, the Roman city of Ammaia slowly because archeology is so muddy land will be reborn. The old Dean’s Thursday renews itself and gives way to a museum. In front of the monumental Fifth Eye Water Apples Antonio where, in the twenties, knew monetize the water that trickles down to Portland today, the home farm and milling becomes the seat of the national park and is preparing to host university .
Lime, the calves of St. Mark, the trains of Beira, the waters of Fadagosa, Toll cloths, canned San Antonio, or the sharp spears through the battlements, no longer exist. Now the county thrives on tourism.
And Marvão from above the cliff shiny watches, quietly changing their county. Everything changes, everything changes, but Marvão, above all, keeps up with its whitewashed houses the sun peeking from behind the gray walls.
ITS LEGACY OF PATRIMONY
Sometimes, History has this Kind of contradictions. It was because life stopped suddenly that Marvão, as a whole, is the owner of an architectonical legacy witch is unique in the country. An unparalled landscape gives also an added value to this legacy. This landscape imposes itself above the walls of the castle, near mountain riders, valleys and pastures, amongst wild and rocky landscapes, viewing the ancient burgh grew up along the track which led to the castle. This path, made up of Ruas das Portas da Vila, Praça do Pelourinho, Rua do Espírito Santo and Rua do Castelo is the richest in terms of architectural heritage. This area is dominated by traditional architecture with appreciable decoration on the openings of doors and windows which are very good examples of the 15™ and 16™ centuries. The castle has two interconnected enclosures and monumental cistern which may be visited. At the Military Museological Collection, you can find out the whole history of this extremely ancient fortress. The urban enclosure encloses the houses(…) at such height that the highest flying bird can be seen flying from below (…) whose walls are more useful in preventing those within walls from falling than in preventing the entrance of others outside walls (…) that this fortress during war time must not have to suffer anything more serious than a lack of water (Prior Frei Miguel Bravo, 1758). The larger buildings include: the ancient parish churches of Santa Maria e Santiago – in the first, which has been greatly altered, is placed the Municipal Museum (which already existed in 1321); the Capela do Espirito Santo (1573); the Former City Council built during the Manueline period with a Prison, a Clock Tower and a Former Court House from the 1700´s (where Mouzinho da Silveira was the Judge) is the Cultural Center of Marvão. This Center has been set up as a museum and may be visited; The Pelourinho (17™ century); Calvário (1804); outside walls there is the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Estrela, founded in 1448. The town´s history can be read in the remaining physical heritage, which marked the 15 ™ and 16™ centuries and can be considered its urban highest point. Few buildings were erected during the 17™ and 18™ centuries, except the bastion fortifications of Portas de Rodão, Portas da Vila, Postigo do Torrejão and of the Castle. During the 1700´s , it was erected a building standing out which is the Governor´s House in Rua do Espirito Santo, displaying its fine forged iron balconies and probably the Passos da Paixão. From the 1700´s, there is the Municiapilty Fontain which was located down the slope and was brought into town during the 19™ century , to operate using piped water… aiming to fulfill an ancestral wish ( never satisfied yet) of having a public drinking fountain with spring water.
THE SURRONDING LAND
If you prefer walking tour, they are marked out along the Natural Park of the Serra de São Mamede mountain range: the pedestrian tour of Marvão which runs along the “medieval stone-paved roadway” towards Portagem; the Galegos tour which encloses Marvão along the wild border area in the east.
If you prefer car tour, or driving and walking at the same time, it is worth passing though the picturesque places and settlements of Porto da Espada, Olhos de Àgua, Escusa, Santo António das Areias, Beirã, Cabeçudos so as to pay a visit to the countless vestiges of a distant past: houses with false domes, anthropomorphic tombs and small wine presses digged in the rock, dolmers, menhirs, the Castro de Crença (small castle), ancient bridges, stone-paved roadways and the gutters of Escusa. From the Roman period, emerged the City of Ammaia which is located near São Salvador da Aramenha, englobes excavations and museums open for visitors.
Further downstream, flows a river flanked by a huge plantation of poplar trees; at the bottom, there is the fine 15™ century bridge and the Portagem, having the scenary of the giant crag from where Marvão peeps out. In this orchard, you can enjoy a fluvial swimming-pool, visit a well –equiped Leisure Centre, handicraft shops and many restaurants which serve the excellent gastronomy and wine of this region. If you choose to take the exit towards Castelo de Vide, you will pass the Ammaia – Marvão golf club, a sports facility which attracts visitors from all over the world.
And you will leave Marvão wishing to come back again because it’s far behond words: Marvão stands for itself!
