São Francisco Square in the Town of São Cristóvão In Brazil

São Francisco Square in the Town of São Cristóvão - Brazil

São Francisco Square, in the center of São Cristovão, is a 4-asided clearing Misericórdia, the provincial palace and the suitable houses of different historical periods will surround by big old buildings like church of Sao Francisco and cloister, the church and the Santa Casa there around the square. This gigantic ensemble, together with the surroundings 18. and houses of the 19-th century, creates an urban scenery in the history of the town since his origin. The Franciscan complex is an example of the typical architecture of the religious order developed in northeast Brazil.

Wonderful Universal Importance

São Francisco Square, in the center of São Cristóvão, in the north-east of Brazil, is unusual and homogeneous gigantic ensemble compound from public and private buildings which representatives of the period are in which the Portuguese and Spanish crowns were combined. São Francisco Square is a logical and harmonious ensemble in which the patterns of the land use put up followed through Portugal and the standards for towns through Spain. Founded according to the length and width asks for the law IX of the Philippine regulations this square encloses the image of a place mayor in the colonial towns of the Hispanoamerikaners America, during in the urban pattern of a Portuguese colonial town in a tropical scenery. Consequently it can be looked as a noteworthy symbiosis of the urban planning of towns of Portugal and Spain. The middle-class and religious institution buildings from which the most important ones were the property of the church and the cloister of Sao Francisco around the square.

Francisco Square is the result of the combination of the ways of the land occupation and the settlement of Portugal and Spain according to which urban settlements were founded in the respective colonies. This property has a significant mixture of urban models, what during the union from less than one crown of two rivaling ones richly. Of the page ã o Francisco Square is an excellent example of a considered and coherent architectural ensemble which has been preserved as a social boundary stone of the town, and a place for important social and cultural expressions. It shows a paradigm of the uniform reasonable planning and adaptation to the specific qualities of the local topography.

Historical Data

São Cristóvão was the old capital of Sergipe del Rey; he shows that the occupation of the region and the development of the towns founded during the reign of King Philip II, during the 60-year period when Portugal was under the Spanish domain. The modes of territorial occupation and settlement used by Spain and Portugal in their American colonies between the 15th and the 17th century were striking. Portugal was a maritime trade network, and could occupy coastal areas in Africa and Asia for the creation of trade and colonial settlements in Brazil. Portugal occupied the Brazilian coast, founder port cities as nodes with Portugal and the other colonies. The urban plans of these settlements to the topography by adjustment of the layouts of local conditions.

The history of S. ã o Cristóv ã o is connected with the colonization of Sergipe if is because of the strong opposition of the family population, it was that an invariable communication between Salvador and Olinda, two urban main centers of the colony imperious. It was also important to have free access to the main rivers, often handicapped by French smugglers. To strengthen the colony in the conflicts with the Brazilian Indians and French smugglers Cristóv ã o of the Barros, the town of S. ã o Cristóv ã o, on the isthmus educatedly by the Poxim founded river, in the stream Aracaj ú area. The land was he by the king Philip II with the expectation that it would be divided among the colonists, the suggestion of the reconciliation process. The town in 1594-95 and in 1607 was moved to the present position. See ã o Cristóv ã was o the capital of Sergipe, the administrative and commercial center between Salvador and Recife and the starting point for the colonization inland at the middle of the 19-th century.

In 1855 the capital of the town Aracaj ú was transferred. See ã o Cristóv ã o, with his churches, loo star and worldly mansions, will remain as a testament to the past of Sergipe and Brazil. In 1938 it was explained a historical monument S. ã o Cristóv ã o by the government. Between 1941 and 1962 many monuments became in 1967 and the architecture, urban individually protected, and scenery ensemble of São Cristóvã was enrolled into the federal level in the archaeological, ethnographic and scenery-protective book.

Source:whc/unesco