The Roman Temple in Évora needs some urgent attention as pieces of stone have been falling into the street.
The monument has been under scrutiny since June and the resulting report has identified fragments of the structure that have broken off.
The 2,000-year-old temple, known as the Temple of Diana, will now be the target of an "urgent intervention" after having identified "an imminent and very high risk" of more fragments of stone parting company with the main structure falling off.
The regional director of culture for the Alentejo, Ana Paula Amendoeira, says the risk is real, both to the monument and to passers-by.
The work is being carried out by the Regional Directorate of Culture of the Alentejo (DRCAlen) in conjunction with Évora council, and started last Friday when scaffolding went up and the area was sectioned off at the start of the four month project.
"The intervention is surgical and complex, but it is not very expensive," said Amendoeira, adding that the investment in the conservation and restoration project for the monument "won’t be more than €50,000."
The regional director also called for "people's understanding as they are being deprived of a full views of the monument," but noted that "there is no other way to carry out work of this importance."
Organised viewings are planned to allow the public to visit during the restoration works.
The Roman Temple of Évora, dating from the first century AD, is unique in Portugal and one of the most remarkable in the Iberian Peninsula. It is a national monument and is part of the classification of the city's historic center as a World Heritage site by the UNESCO.
It represents one of the most significant landmarks relating to the Roman and Lusitanian civilizations of Évora and in Portuguese territory.
History
The temple is believed to have been constructed around the first century A.D., in honour of Augustus, who was venerated as a god during and after his rule. The temple was built in the main public square (forum) of Évora, then called Liberalitas Iulia. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries, from the traditionally accepted chronology, the temple was part of a radical redefinition of the urban city, when religious veneration and administrative polity were oriented around the central space; the structure was modified around this time.
The temple was destroyed during the 5th century by invading Germanic peoples.
During the 14th century, the temple's space served as a stronghouse for the town's castle, while Fernão Lopes described the structure as being in shambles. In 1467, King Afonso V of Portugal authorized Soeiro Mendes to remove stones from the structure for building purposes and defense. The ruins of the temple were incorporated into a tower of the Castle of Évora during the Middle Ages. The base, columns and architraves of the temple were kept embedded in the walls of the medieval building; the temple-turned-tower was used as a butcher shop from the 14th century until 1836; this new use of the temple structure helped preserve its remains from complete destruction.
In the 16th-century Manueline foral ('charter'), the temple is represented, during a period when oral tradition suggested that the temple was attributed to Quintus Sertorius the famous Lusitanian general (and perpetuated by paladins André de Resende and Mendes de Vasconcelos).
It was in the 17th century that references to the 'Temple of Diana', first made by Father Manuel Fialho, began to appear. Although the Roman temple of Évora is often called the Temple of Diana, any association with the Roman goddess of hunt stems not from archaeology but from a legend created in the 17th century by the Portuguese priest. Other interpretations suggest that it might have been dedicated to Jupiter, the Roman equivalent of Zeus.
The first reconstitution of the temple's appearance occurred in 1789 by James Murphy.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the structure still had the pydramidal merlons typical of the post-Reconquista Arabic structures around the colonnade. In 1836 it ceased being a butchershop.
In 1840, Cunha Rivara, then director of the Public Library of Évora, obtained the right to dispose of the buildings annexed to the monument from the Portuguese Inquisition, which were annexed to the northern façade of the temple. These structures were demolished, and the first great archaeological excavation was undertaken in Portugal. The resulting survey uncovered tanks of a primitive aqueduct. The stress on the space had begun to reach its limits by 1863, when the ceiling was partially destroyed; the tanks unearthed in the early excavation were also partially destroyed during expansion and landscaping of the main square.
By 1869, Augusto Filipe Simões proposed the urgent demolition of the medieval structures, defending the restoration of the primitive face of the Roman temple. Three years later, under the direction of Italian architect Giuseppe Cinatti, the vestiges of the medieval structures were finally removed, and a program of restoration was carried out in line with the Romantic thinking of the period.
On 1 June 1992, the Portuguese Institute of Architectural Patrimony (Portuguese: Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico) became responsible for conservancy of the monument. Following a 13 September 1992 publication (DR176, 2ª Série, Declaração de rectificação de anúncio n.º281/2011), a public tender was issued for proposals relative the Roman temple and area surrounding it.
Between 1989 and 1994, new excavations in the vicinity of the temple were completed under the supervision of the German archeologist Theodor Hauschild.
