Praça do Maquês de Pombal & More - 1773

As the Minister of King José I, the Marquis de Pombal had the rational city of Vila Real de Santo Antonio built in 1773 according to the ideas of the “Enlightenment”. With 41 building blocks in an orthogonal grid as a kind of checkerboard pattern with in in the middle a large square with an obelisk. A form of urban planning that the Roman architect Vitruvius already describes in his 10 books about architecture and that was mainly motivated by military strategy and rationality.

But especially because of the possibility of aligning the two main axes of the city with the dominant wind directions and keeping the city fresh and dust-free.

Around the square with radiating lines in the pavement are some buildings of interest, as the Igreja Matriz church, the customs office, the military headquarters and the town hall. Most of the buildings have been realized using a prefab construction method that consist of a wooden latticework system covered with (hard) stone. A construction method that Pombal already used to rebuild the lower city of Lisbon after the earthquake of 1755.

Drawing Praça do Maquês de Pombal: Teun Swinkels