Turismo de Portugal has launched a website offering interesting buildings for tourist development.
The invest.turismodeportugal.pt platform aims to showcase investment opportunities for unused buildings that have heritage and tourism potential.
The aim is to promote contact between investors and the property owners, who want to sell to those interested in developing a tourism business as long as they preserve the essential features of the building.
The new website includes statistical data, training and financial opportunities and is in Portuguese and English.
According to the Secretary of State for Tourism, this website, "is an excellent mechanism that has responded to the challenge to make known numerous investment opportunities in tourism throughout the country, which, for lack of information, do not often reach interested investors. It will be a great tool to promote the spread of tourism to the whole territory and to the cohesion of the country."
One of the buildings on the list is the old casino in Armação de Pêra where hope for its useful future was rekindled in 2015 by Silves mayor, Rosa Palma, who stated that,
"The council wants to look at the redevelopment of Armação de Pêra’s old casino because it is an emblematic building of high historical and architectural value, a reference point in the urban environment, as well as an integral part of the identity and collective memory of Armação de Pêra’s people and the Algarve itself."
The council asked locals their opinions on what to do with the classic building’s but anyway intended to implement something called, "a sustainable funding model."
This involved a Silves Council plan to repair and restore the building to create a tourist office, a multipurpose room with a stage and spaces for exhibitions, lectures, receptions, meetings, etc, a restaurant and an area for reading, information technology, education and culture. (HERE)
As locals and many tourists are aware, nothing happened, so the casino building now is listed on Turismo de Portugal’s investment site, with the briefest of descriptions:
“This is a property with rehabilitation needs in view of its state of conservation. Part of its outdoor space includes a children’s playground.”
A once proud building, listed for development, is the Seiça Monastery in the Beira Litoral region, which carries a rather more fruitful description:
“The Monastery was donated by D. Sancho I to the Cistercian Order (Monastery of Alcobaça), in the XII century. However, the built heritage only bears witness to the sixteenth century and beyond.
“Between the last years of the XVI century and the beginning of XVII century, the conventual building was completely rebuilt, according to a project of the authorship of Mateus Rodrigues, beginning to function as a center of philosophical studies of the Order, due to its proximity to the College of Santa Cruz de Coimbra.
“Although the monastery is currently in advanced ruin, the church building stands out, being considered the “most interesting piece” of the whole. The interior was greatly altered with the installation of a rice husking factory in the 19th century."
If you don't fancy that one, there are 17 further buildings listed on the invest.turismodeportugal.pt site.
If that's not enough, for a list and description of 33 State-owned buildings, offered for tourism purposes under the government’s Revive programme, see
http://revive.turismodeportugal.pt/en/imoveis
