U.Porto Memory

Rectory Building of the U.Porto - Background: reference works

Palácio da Justiça [Court of Justice]

The Court of 2^nd Instance of Porto was designed by Raúl Rodrigues de Lima in 1961, in an anti-modern and historicist style. It was built in an area occupied by the old barns, converted into the Fish Market (1874-1952) by the engineer Gustavo Adolfo Gonçalves de Sousa, by the Chapel of Senhor Jesus do Calvário Novo and by the Santo António da Cordoaria Hospice, which later became the Roda dos Expostos [The Foundling Wheel] (1838-1854).

This gigantic basilica-type building has seven floors and three areas: the Court of Appeal; the Civil Courts; the "passos perdidos" [a corridor]; the noble area of the Court which is limited to the 5^th floor and consists of a Court Room, the Hall of Sessions, the office of the President of the Court of Appeal and the old Reception Room, today part of the Judicial Museum.

Its construction was supported by senior members of the Commission for the Construction of Jailhouses, of the Ministry of Public Works and by more than two dozen plastic artists, responsible for the decorations which included 50 pieces of art, including sculptures, tapestries and frescoes by the sculptures Henrique Moreira (1890-1979), Sousa Caldas (1894-1965), Leopoldo de Almeida (1898-1975), Salvador Barata Feyo (1899-1990), Eduardo Tavares (1918-1991), Manuel Pereira da Silva (1920-2003), Lagoa Henriques (1923-2009) and Irene Vilar (1930-2008), among others, and by the painters Dordio Gomes (1890-1976), Augusto Gomes (1910-1976), Guilherme Camarinha (1912-1994), Júlio Resende (1917-2011) and Isolino Vaz (1922-1992).

In the Judicial Museum can be appreciated sculptures and paintings from the old Court of Appeal of Porto, such as the altarpiece of the chapel that existed in the Sessions Room, and images of Our Lady of Conception and Saint Anthony, and the emblematic judicial processes, of Camilo Castelo Branco and Ana Plácido, Zé do Telhado and physician Vicente Urbino de Freitas.