Imperfect Chapels of the Monastery of Batalha will be improved

The Capelas Imperfeitas, in the Monastery of Batalha, will be intervened under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), to allow “better conditions for presenting concerts and other cultural activities”, said this Friday the Secretary of State for Culture .

As part of a visit to the works taking place in the D. João I and D. Afonso V Cloisters, Isabel Cordeiro highlighted the plans that exist to continue to reclassify the monument, this year celebrating 40 years of inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list .

“It is particularly important for us to know the details of the interventions in progress and the ones to come, in particular the one that will be carried out in this place, in Capelas Imperfeitas”, said the Secretary of State.

By the end of 2025, the monument will benefit from an investment of 1.6 million euros, aimed at recovering the roofs of the Chapter Room, reclassifying the Cloister Garden, improving the electrical system and security equipment and conserving and restoring the Chapels Imperfect, detailed the director general of Cultural Heritage, João Carlos dos Santos.

Specifically in Capelas Imperfeitas, pantheon of D. Duarte, in addition to conservation and restoration, Isabel Cordeiro highlighted the component of “public enjoyment, because better conditions will be created for the presentation of concerts and other cultural activities”.

The official underlined “the importance of continuity of interventions in this exceptional monument”, ensured by the PRR, for what “they represent in the strengthening of close relations with the community”.

The director-general of Cultural Heritage also highlighted the planned intervention for the Imperfect Chapels, inserted “in a broader plan of a major conservation and restoration intervention that wants to apply for EU funds 2030”.

João Carlos dos Santos said that what is planned for the monument is an “ambitious plan” and recalled that since 2012 the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage “has invested more than three million and 400 thousand euros in various interventions” in the Monastery of Batalha.

The undertaking, which takes place in the D. João I and D. Afonso V cloisters and which cost more than 1.1 million euros, 85% supported by community funds, “is unique and emblematic” for focusing on “iconic spaces” where there are “various authors, distinctive construction periods and even differentiated stylistic phases”, highlighting “the unity and exuberance of the Manueline style”.

The director of the Monastery of Batalha admitted that what is foreseen by the PRR “is not enough for the needs of the monument”.

“It is certainly a good impulse, but the new community framework is close and, like the previous ones, I believe that good and substantial support can be channeled to the benefit of the conservation and requalification of the Monastery of Batalha”, said Joaquim Ruivo today.

The director recalled that around 400,000 tourists visit the museum every year and lamented that “young Portuguese people have little knowledge of their heritage and visit it little”.

And he launched a challenge to the Secretary of State for Culture: “Alongside means of heritage conservation, along with research support, along with more effective tourism promotion dynamics, a generational pact is urgently needed”, to “create and potentiate dynamics that motivate, enthuse, excite, link the new generations in the knowledge, admiration and taste for their heritage”.