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File of Building |
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Adress:
Pç Gomes Teixeira
4099-002 Porto
Contacts:
Tel: 223401400 Fax: 222008628
Site: http://info.fc.up.p |
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The building was constructed by the Royal Academy of the Navy and Commerce, later Polytechnic Academy. With the reform of 1911 it became the Faculty of Sciences. The first plan was performed by José da Costa Silva and dates from 1803. In 1807 it was corrected by Carlos da Cruz Amarante, and became the approved plan, even though it went through new changes in 1962.
The construction began during the regency of D. João VI, before the first French invasion, and ended in the late 19th century. The building, of classical style, has some similarities with the Santo António Hospital.
On the ground floor, the main façade has doors and full arches, with iron rails. The arches compose a portico that comes before the vestibule.
The first floor, over which a mezzanine is located, has some windows (the three central ones and the last two on each side) decorated with balusters.
The salient central part is composed by four Doric-Roman columns and a triangular fronton. The fronton’s spandrel has the royal coat of arms of the last dynasty and balustrade balconies.
Throughout its whole length the main façade ends with a closed attic.
Interior
The vast vestibule, paved with marble, leads to a double granite staircase on whose lateral walls appear paintings by Veloso Salgado, from 1917.
The Noble Room, decorated with gilt stuccoes, also has murals by the same artist.
Among the staircase paintings the bronze bust of Professor Gomes Teixeira is worthy of mention.
On the space under the staircase, facing the northern entry (Leões Square), there is a modest monument by the sculptor João Silva, placed there in 1948, in remembrance of the University students killed during the First World War.
Operating on the building are the Zoology Museum (Professor Augusto Nobre), the Anthropology Institute’s Archaeology and Pre-History Museum (Professor Mendes Correia) and the Geological Sciences Museum (organised by Professor Venceslau de Sousa Pereira Lima).
The Zoology Museum was created in 1931 and has a continental, insular and ultramarine fauna. It has two rooms totally dedicated to an Ornithology collection.
The Archaeology Museum has Palaeolithic items, ceramics and axes from the Iron Age and Hispanic, Arab and Iberian numismatics.
Finally, the Geology Museum was quite damaged by the fire that occurred on the building of the Faculty of Sciences on 20 April 1974. The fire destroyed labels, inventories and several exemplars. The measures taken by Professor Montenegro de Andrade were able to save the essential part of the collections.
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