Changing Views on Heritage Through Time: The Listing of Monastic Heritage in Portugal

Abstract

The listing of monastic heritage emerged in the wake of their secularization in the nineteenth century in most of the European countries and in parallel with the rising level of heritage awareness in a process ongoing through to contemporary times. In Portugal, out of the set of the first 15 buildings listed at the beginning of the twentieth century over a half were former monasteries. Since then, the listing of monastic buildings advanced at different paces with the Portuguese state still continuing to list these buildings but neither in the same way nor according to the same criteria. Analysis of the heritage listing registers of monastic buildings over this period – carried out through cross-referencing different cases – enables the identification of the changes that occurred in the ways each society, across each historical period, perceived and valued these buildings and the choices made regarding the objects deemed to deserve a heritage status. These choices reflect the changes occurring to the societal values over this period. By focusing on a specific typology of “traditional” heritage, the analysis also reveals the challenges that the listing act confronts nowadays coupled with the need to rethink the official heritage lists.