Cidade Velha, Historic Centre of Ribeira Grande In Cape Verde

Cidade Velha, Historic Centre of Ribeira Grande In Cape Verde

Short Report

The town of Ribeira Grande, renamed Cidade Velha in the late 18th century, was the first European colonial outpost in the tropics. Located in the south of the island of Santiago, the city also boasts a number of impressive remains of the original zooms including two churches, an old fortress and nailing square with its ornate 16th-century marble pillar.

Wonderful Universal Importance

Cidade Velha, historic center of Ribeira Grande shows Outstanding Universal Value: Ribeira Grande was the first European colonial city to be built in the tropics, and marks an important step in the European expansion at the end of the 15th century to Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Ribeira Grande was later, in the 16th and 17th century an important staging post for Portuguese colonisation and its administration. It was an exceptional center in the routes for the international maritime trade, included in the routes between Africa and the Cape, Brazil and the Caribbean Sea. It is an early picture of transcontinental geopolitical vision. The island location, in a secluded, but close to the coast of Africa, made it a key platform for the Atlantic trade of nation people of modern times. A concentration of nation persons and the inhuman practices of the trade of states enslaved persons, Ribeira Grande was also exceptionally the intercultural encounters from which the first developed Creole society. The valley of Ribeira Grande experimented with new forms of colonial agriculture on the border between the temperate and tropical climates. It was a platform for the acclimation and the distribution of plant species in the world.

Historical Data

The island of Santiago was discovered around 1460 and claimed for the Crown of Portugal. There was no human presence on the island. Exploration of the islands of the archipelago has led to the development of the port of Ribeira Grande in the years that followed. Already in 1466 it was granted a royal charter above which its inhabitants to the slave trade. It was an important staging post for Portuguese maritime, first to the coasts of Africa and later to the Cape. The construction of the first defensive structures, the town hall, and the first church began at the end of the 15th century.

Ribeira Grande is an ideal location, in a secluded and well placed for the organization of the triangular transatlantic flights, in particular trade in African slaves, which the Portuguese theoretically had a monopoly under the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). The old praising monument provides direct evidence of the tires with violence by the system of slavery.

In the 16th century the city developed rapidly, favored by an exceptional maritime position, the intercontinental geographical location, and the Azores. Ribeira Grande is testimony to the first successes of the European shipping on the high seas. It was an important crossroads for a Portuguese trade was quickly fading. The fleet departs or arrives from Guinea, the Indian Ocean, India, Siam, Brazil, the West Indies, and of course came together to exchange merchandise, plants, people, and information. Ribeira Grande was granted the status of a royal city and was the first bishopric of Cape Verde and the African coasts in 1533, are institutionalized role as a place of transit, exchange, and a variety of contacts between the various peoples of Africa, as well as between African slaves and European men. The slaves were in the basic knowledge of European culture and evangelized before they shipped to Europe or America.

Despite its limited area, Cidade Velha is an important place in the history of agronomy, which as a center of transit and acclimation for many species. In the 16th and 17th century it was mainly an experimental garden and conservatory for seeds and plants from all the continents which were sent to other countries, if they were needed. The dry but relatively warm climate in which the trade winds incarnations blew in a key position between temperate and tropical regions, favorable conditions for a very diverse vegetation, as long as fresh water was available. Under the companies concerned are sugar cane, bananas, the East African coconut, American maize, citrus fruit and figs from Europe, cotton, etc.

For a century and a half the geostrategic importance of the city was based on its role as a major port and to the importance of the slave-market. The concentrated wealth in a very limited space, defended by a complex system of forts and walls. The attracted the attention of many seamen - for example, the Uk Sir Francis Drake sacked the city in 1585. The defensive system was reinforced by the royal fort Sao Felipe, completed in 1593, one of the strongest of his time.

From the 17th century, but the new European maritime heavyweights successfully challenged the oceanic commercial hegemony of Portugal and Spain. Jacques Cassard, a buccaneer of Nantes, attacked and waste to Ribeira Grande in 1712 in command of Louis XIV, but already at that time was no longer the rich and powerful maritime citadel of earlier centuries. The decline of the city was sharper in the 18th century; the elite classes left the city and Praia was designated as a commercial port. Political and administrative functions were transferred to Praia in the second half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. The lack of building materials and the proximity of the two cities has led to the demolition of a large number of members of the best constructed buildings, in favor of the new capital. And then came the Ribeira Grande was Cidade Velha, the 'old town'.

However, a residual settlement life in the middle of the ruins of the Portuguese colonial city in the 19th century, and was then partially reconstructed in the second half of the 20th century. It has a certain local importance is traditional housing that is characteristic of Cape Verde. A first restoration campaign was carried out in the early 1960s, the old fortress, the church of Nossa Senhora do A. g. do Rosário, and condemn Monument. In 1992 ICOMOS described the scientific level of the campaign as mediocre.

In 1970 the State Party again looked at Cidade Velha, with the purpose of the assessment of the home and the increasing awareness. A first UNESCO mission took place in 1978. This, however, was not raised by a lack of human and financial resources. A second program of consolidation of vestiges and restoration was carried out in 1999-2003. It is also, with the help of international cooperation, in particular in the urban ensemble.

Source:whc/unesco