From Boundary to New Centrality: The Transformation of the Santa Cruz Monastery to Accommodate the New Facilities of the Liberal State During the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

During the 19th century, modern facilities and new infrastructures dictated profound urban reforms in European cities. Coimbra, the seat of the Portuguese University, desired the same modernisation but lacked the financial and technical capacity to implement it. Despite all limitations, the liberal regime managed to break through the band of colleges that surrounded the city and carried out an audacious modernisation process. That transformed the old Monastery of Santa Cruz into the new centrality and its farm into the modern bourgeois neighbourhood, dictating the expansion of the urban fabric and giving rise to the current consolidated city. This article emphasises this reorganisation process and how it replicated the old correlation between economic and political centres.