Building façade in Ovar | photo by Francisco Queiroz/IPC

    Tiled Façades in Ovar

    Starting date: November 2010
    Ending date: December 2011

    This study consisted in a detailed survey of the ceramic ornaments found on the façades of the city and the municipality of Ovar, focused both on the azulejos and on other ceramic elements used to decorate or crown the buildings (namely pine cones, globes, cornices, allegorical statues, etc.) The study also included the assessment of the façades’ state of conservation.



    The field work’s results led to a final report and a georeferenced database with one entry for each façade and a brief description of the ceramic coverings or other ceramic elements (when applicable). Whenever possible, this description mentioned the date, authorship (designer and producer), rarity, technical aspects (the type of pieces and their production mode), meaning, relative and absolute value and other aspects that might be relevant for understanding the value of each façade.  

    The study was commissioned by the Ovar Municipality to Archeoestudos in 2010 as part of the Programme for the Characterization and Valorization of Strategic Endogenous Resources – Azulejo / Programme of Corporate Valorization of Ovar’s Traditional Azulejos, within the Integrated Programme for the Valorization of Ovar’s City Centre

    The field work was the result of a partnership between the company Archeoestudos, responsible for the general coordination and production of cartography, Az (formerly the João Miguel dos Santos Simões Thematic Network for Azulejo and Ceramic Studies), the curator-restorer Sónia Magdalena Cardoso, in charge of field work and the entries related to the works’ state of conservation, and the art historian Francisco Queiroz, tasked with field coordination and consultancy and the final report.

    The work carried out by Az consisted in creating entries with descriptions of azulejos and other ceramic elements and uploading these entries to the InPatrimonium database. From 2012 on, the project was developed alongside another one, Cataloguing Portuguese pattern tiles, and the entries on buildings whose decorative patterns have already been catalogued are currently available on Az Infinitum


    Az work group:
    Rosário Salema de Carvalho (coordination)
    Isabel Pires
    Patrícia Nóbrega
    Lúcia Marinho