Vila Viçosa is also called Callipole. And its inhabitants are the calipolenses. This name was given by André de Resende in his Antiguidades da Lusitânia (Lusitania Antiquities), wrote in Latin, and later it was vulgarized. The author didn’t find a better way to translate into the Latin language the term Vila Viçosa than adopting the name already given in Greek to three ancient villages, which has a similar meaning to the Portuguese term. However, the use of the word Callípole didn’t become common until 1640. The divulging of the term is owed to the Priest Bento Pereira who, dealing with André de Resende’s work, associated Vila Viçosa to the name, in his Prosódia Latina (Latin Prosody), published in 1643, a work of great circulation among students. The popularization of the term occurred in the 18th century.
The place where the present Vila Viçosa is set would have been occupied by several peoples until its Romanization. Almost every archaeologic remains of those remote times refer to the Roman period. The centre of the old Roman village would be around the Poço do Alandroal (Pitch of Alandroal). This place would have been the centre of the existing population agglomerate until the 13th century. After the Roman domination overcame the Arabian presence from about 715 until 1217. In that year, the Saracen village is taken to the moors by the knights of Aviz, during the kingdom of Sancho II. Until 1267, it’s the Military Order of Aviz which administrates these lands, being the repopulation process compromised for several years due to the inexistence of a building to protect those who wanted to live there. Until then, the place continued to be mostly occupied by moors, now under the authority of the King of Portugal.
In the kingdom of Afonso III, the line of the Christian Conquest spreads to the Algarve, as the definite possession of the Alto Alentejo is achieved, and this monarch engages himself in the repopulation of the desert, or almost desert, non cultivated lands, giving them charters in order to attract colonists and to consolidate the territory defence lines. In 1250 he grants the charter to Estremoz. The Aldeia dos Bugios (Bugios village), meaning “of the moors”, becomes part of his municipality term. This village existed at the place which is nowadays Vila Viçosa, more precisely, between the Convent of Esperança and the ruins of the St. Paul’s Covent. However, due to the great territorial extension of the Estremoz municipality, this monarch thought it would be convenient to cut a new municipality in the same autonomous land, with better advantages and privileges. In 1267 the land division of the future Vila Viçosa began. In that year, Afonso III starts, trough the sesmeiros (distributors of no cultivated lands), the division and distribution of the lands to the construction of new houses, in the higher point of the Vale Viçoso, showing his intention to fortify and defend the place.
The foundation of the Austin’s Convent gives the required breath to the population of those lands.
It is in 1270 that the King Afonso III, concedes the charter to Vila Viçosa which, from then on, becomes a municipality. This document follows the moulds of those of Monsaraz, Santarém and Estremoz. The first settlers of Vila Viçosa were already set there. The attribution of the charter to the small existing population agglomerate recognizes its importance.
After that, the inhabitants of the bordering municipalities, previously created, run into Vila Viçosa attracted by the amount of exemptions and privileges they could get there, as well as for its soil fertility.
In the kingdom of the King Dinis, Vila Viçosa was still a small population agglomerate, forming one more Portuguese medieval characteristic village. The meanwhile appeared fortified burgh of the Castle, brings to Vila Viçosa the defensive security required to its urban development and allows the evolution of an experience of singular-space occupation.
From the 14th century onwards, inside its dionisino Castle, the calipolense population kept growing and, as time went by, it transposed the walls of the fortress and the small town bulwark.
The medieval buildings are much modified relating to what they originally were, so, we can only suppose they were similar to the oldest subsisting constructions. Their typology corresponds to ground-floor houses with few windows or doors. About its construction process we ought to refer that lath-and-plaster walls would be used, a technique of Arabian origin.
The new urban area of Vila Viçosa, which began to be built about 1270, would have perpendicular streets crossed by some small paths parallel to the main road of local connexion, forming an organized net, composed by narrow and rectilinear streets. The typology of the blocks is marked by small narrow plots with few open areas. In what concerns the buildings, presently we can observe the constructions generally have 2 or 3 floors, with regular openings and are made of masonry or brick. There’s almost nothing left from the original constructions. It’s also important to underline that this part of the urban tissue suffered several transformations due to the military fortification works in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The charter of Vila Viçosa is, in 1512, reformulated by the King Manuel I, as an answer to new times and new needs related to the administrative reorganization and a better structure of the economical life that had been developing from long ago, since the 13th century. The Vila Viçosa of the 16th century is already a developed population centre with a strong economical and demographic growth.
Vila Viçosa became a property of the House of Braganza in 1461. By historical reasons we can consider it, at that time, the Vila de Corte (the Court Town) and so, the one which better reflected the power structures and to which the greater urban worries were conceded. It was in Vila Viçosa that the Dukes of Braganza’s golden centre of power was set. During the 16th and the 17th centuries, the Ducal Vila Viçosa shone in its apogee which its monuments and patrimonial richness still witness today.
The set of the Dukes’ Court brought most important consequences to the development of the town, as it attracted to it, during two centuries, a great number of workers of the ducal house with their families and an important flow of profits coming from its most large patrimony spread around the whole country. That gave rise to economical development and to socio-cultural characteristics without equivalence in other places of similar dimension. It also allowed the construction of convents and noble buildings which gave Vila Viçosa its unmistakable appearance.
It’s from the 16th century onwards, more specifically from the year of 1502, with the beginning of the construction of the Ducal Palace, and the subsequent Duke D. Jaime’s change of residence, he moved from the Castle to there, that an important constructive phase of Renascent taste develops.
The installation of the House of Braganza and the Paço do Reguengo (Palace of the Crown Land), presently the Ducal Palace, also implied the nobles’ exit from the alcárcova of the Castle who set their residence near the Palace. This fact influenced the formation of big blocks occupied by the nobles’ houses and respective gardens. The influence of the construction of the Ducal Palace in the town growth is clear. On the other hand, the beginning of the construction of the Artillery Fortress, in 1520 on D. Jaime’s dukedom, gave rise to the demolition of several houses and to the destruction of the original castle as well as of a great part of the primitive (medieval) wall.
This town maintains, still today, a frame of structural and architectonic characteristics which define it as one of the most meaningful examples of the Portuguese urbanism, regarding the unitary tissue of the town seen a whole.
The importance of the monumental architecture in Vila Viçosa is undoubted as it was, in great part, the conditioner of the development and disposition of the built patrimony.
In fact, each monument tends to be built as an attractive of a larger patrimonial system, where we can find not only the immediate urban and rural entanglement, bout also a whole net of connections corresponding to the material and symbolic life related to it: the humanized landscape, the “proximity” patrimony (non monumental or non classified structures which identify the territory, as small manors, houses, cruzeiros (big crosses made of stone set in public places), etc.) and the diffuse patrimony (walls, fountains, remains, etc.).
From an early time the growth of Vila Viçosa shows strong preoccupations with urbanism whose lines of direction are inserted in a real “city logic”, whose genesis can be seen in the conceptualized idealization by the humanist thought of the beginning of the Enlightenment. D. Teodósio I, D. Teodósio II and the King João I, deeply dedicated themselves to Humanism. As Dukes of Bragança, with their court set in Vila Viçosa, their sponsoring attitude, which transparently emanated from the beautiful Callipole, in the establishment, support and development of the Portuguese humanistic studies, was remarkable and had notorious consequences to the Portuguese culture.
Vila Viçosa transformed itself into an important centre of culture, receiving the Literary Court of the Dukes of Braganza, several important figures who were fascinated with the splendour and opulence of the Ducal Palace, confirming it as unique in the Iberia, only comparable to the Royal Palace in Madrid. Besides this, we must point that after the Royal House in Lisbon, the Palace of Vila Viçosa was the first House of the Kingdom, where a real court of the Humanism was set.
Add to this, the local increasing of the artistic market allowed the existence of other regional nuclei besides the city of Évora, as Vila Viçosa, under de aegis of the Dukes of Braganza and their court, several experts and painting workshops set there, attracted by the growing orders and revalorization of their activity. It’s André Peres’s case, an artist connected to the prestigious court of Braganza of the Duke D. Teodósio II, and whose work was then slowly revealed. Still to refer the retablística (the art of creating retables) we can admire at some temples in Vila Viçosa which have the particularity of, in the typology of its various examples, presenting a set of remarkable retables of the most varied kinds and characteristics which, in the whole, include exemplary the European production of this kind of art, from the Renascence to the Rococo, in all its nuances and typologies.
The analysis of the artistic activity of the Braganza dynasty, referring to its domination in Vila Viçosa, may provide excellent tracks to understand the Portuguese art, particularly that of the 17th century, and its singularities.
From the year when the Duke D. João limited the crown, as D. João IV, Vila Viçosa enters hibernation and much of its palace wealth was taken to Lisbon, to the Ribeira Palace, similar to the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa.
Vila Viçosa has several churches and convents. Among them we must refer the Austin Convent, their Church and the Dukes’ Pantheon, the Duchesses’ Pantheon, the Convent of Chagas, the Holy Cross Church, the Convent of Esperança, the Church of Lapa, and the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição.
The Ducal Palace, unique exemplar of the mannerist architecture, impresses its visitors. Its façade, in a classical style, sober lines and geometric strictness, is covered with the best marble of the region, the golden pink, which provides its monumental soberness a tonality of fairy tale. The inside is opulent. The square which welcomes it shows scenographic shapes.
Facing the Porta da Torre (Tower Door) more or less in the middle of the present Dukes of Braganza Avenue which accompanies the wall of the fortress from the Austin Convent until the Church of Esperança, rises one of the most beautiful and elegant pillories existing in Portugal, which is a real ex-libris of this Museum-town. Vila Viçosa also has museums, many and varied, as the Sacred Art Museum, the museums of the Foundation of the House of Brangança, and the Archeology, Hunt and Marble museums.
Vila Viçosa was and still is the hometown of most important people, a town of noble houses, churches and convents, cruzeiros and fountains.
This was the home of eminent personalities in the Portuguese history, arts, literature, science and war.
Florbela’s spirit was also born here, where literature lives in its higher poetic inspiration, as well as Túlio Espanca whose studying labour erected with the most beautiful precious stones an exquisite work of fine and fascinating lines where he captures the real soul of the Alentejo.
Among its noble houses we ought to refer: The Sousa da Câmara Palace and the Town Hall, in the Praça da República (Republic Square); The Matos da Azambuja Palace, in the Martim Afonso de Sousa Square, reminding the Italian loggias; The House of the Machados and the House of the Mascarenhas. In the ancient Fidalgos Street, which goes from the Terreiro do Paço to the Praça Nova (New Square), presently Praça da República, we’ll find the old Sanches Baena’s and Silveiros Menezes’ Palaces. In the Terreiro do Paço raises up the Bishop’s Palace. Outside of the urban perimeter it’s the Casa dos Peixinhos which deserves a special remark.
Near the ducal town stands the famous and historical Tapada Real (Royal Park), a land property inserted in the old patrimony of the House of Braganza.
The Park of Vila Viçosa is a piece of the Alentejo where one can experience all the rural magic as well as the tradition rooted in this soil and in its inhabitants.
The Natural and Cultural Patrimony of Vila Viçosa is an extraordinary heritage which results from unusual historical circumstances related to most important moments of the History of Portugal.
Some extremely relevant events of the political history of Portugal are connected to Vila Viçosa, events which largely determined the future of the independency of this kingdom. If Guimarães was the cradle, Vila Vilosa was the motherland of the Restauration of the Portuguese Independence.