Santa Clara-a-Velha Monastery

Santa Clara-a-Velha was founded in the 1280s and refounded in 1314 by Isabel of Aragon, queen to Dinis, who retired here and was buried in it. The problem was the site: on the Mondego floodplain, and the river flooded it repeatedly, depositing silt until by the seventeenth century the nuns were living on an upper floor above their own drowned church and eventually abandoned it in 1677 for higher ground. The building then sat half-buried in mud for three hundred years. Excavation from the 1990s pumped out the water, removed the silt and stabilised the structure, and the site opened in 2009 with an interpretation centre holding the thousands of everyday objects the mud preserved - shoes, ceramics, textiles, coins - which is the unexpected payoff of a building being buried rather than demolished. The Gothic church stands roofless with its rose window intact.

History

Mor Dias founded the first house of Poor Clares here in the 1280s; it was dissolved in 1311 and refounded in 1314 by Queen Elizabeth, wife of King Denis, and building began in 1316 under Domingos Domingues, the church being consecrated in 1330. The Mondego flooded it as early as 1331, around 1612 the nuns raised a floor halfway up the church, in 1647 John IV ordered them to leave, and the last nuns went in 1677; excavation after 1995 cleared away the mud and water (Wikipedia, Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha).

What's there

• The excavated church - a roofless Gothic nave dug out of three centuries of silt.
• The finds - shoes, ceramics and textiles preserved by the mud, in the centre.
• The rose window - surviving intact in the west front.
• The flood story - a monastery abandoned in 1677 to a river that would not stop.

When to go

Year-round. One to two hours including the interpretation centre. Closed Mondays.

What to expect

The church has no roof, so rain means getting wet. Water still needs pumping and parts of the site can be closed. The interpretation centre is better than the ruins for most visitors. It is across the river from the centre, about a twenty-minute walk.

Nearby

Portugal dos Pequenitos is beside it; central Coimbra is across the bridge.

Key facts