Comendadores da Ega Palace

According to Pedro Dias, who studied the building, the Palace of the Comendadores "is one of the rare civil buildings that still remain, from the beginning of the sixteenth century". It belonged to the Order of Christ. We can observe decorative elements of Manueline character, like the window present in the north facade.

The building develops along a U-shape plan, defining a patio that is closed to the south by a high wall. The axis of the patio is the access axis that leads to the main entrance of the palace. On the ground floor were the spaces for the animals, storage and agricultural production, while the upper floor was allocated to the residential quarters.

The building would already exist at the beginning of the 16th century, but it was at that time, around 1508-1510, that an important campaign of works was carried out, imposed by the visitation of the Order of Christ. Those works conformed (to a large extent) the building we see nowadays. Recently, the palace was the object of a renovation and adaptation to housing tourism, which saved the building from ruin. Nonetheless, the position of the Manueline stonework in one of the windows has been changed without any need.

The work consisted in the attempt to reconstitute graphically the building previous to its recent renovation and adaptation into a touristic facility, in order to establish a starting point for the study of the original architecture of the property. In this sense, the students carried out a bibliographical and photographic recollection referring to the previous situation, which served as basis for a set of interpretation drawings of the building.

• CONCEIÇÃO, Augusto dos Santos – Monografia de Condeixa. Coimbra, 1983
• DIAS, Pedro – A Arquitectura de Coimbra na Transição do Gótico para a Renascença: 1490-1540. Coimbra: EPARTUR, 1982
• NEVES, Amílcar Santos – Memórias do Património. A Ega e seu antigo termo. Coimbra, 2008
• ROSA, Jéssica dos Santos – De residência dos Comendadores à recuperação do património para Turismo de Habitação: Paço da Ega (Condeixa). Coimbra: dissertação de mestrado apresentada à Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra [policopiada], 2012
• SILVA, José Custódio Vieira da – Paços Medievais Portugueses. Lisboa: IPPAR, 1995
• SIPA

Carlos Mendes  ·  Jorge Gomes  ·  Lia Teodósio  ·  Micaela Oliveira  ·  Olga Dias

2012/2013