Porto São Bento train station
Photo by Domingos Alvão
The São Bento railway station ( port. Estação de São Bento [ ɯʃtɐsɐu dɯ ˌsɐubɛtu ]) is an inner-city railway station in the northern Portuguese city of Porto , located at Praça de Almeida Garrett . The first trains ran to São Bento as early as 1896, but the building itself went into operation in 1916. The train station is located on the site of the former Mosteiro de São Bento de Avé-Maria monastery, today only the name of the monastery remains. The station itself was designed by the architect José Marques da Silva , and the painter Jorge Colaço was responsible for the porch, which was decorated with numerous azulejos . The São Bento subway station, designed by Siza Vieira in 1999, is located under the square in front of the station building .
São Bento is also the seat of the CP subsidiary CP Urbanos do Porto , and a transition to the Portos light rail system, the Metro do Porto , is also possible.
history
In 1518 King Manuel I of Portugal ordered that a monastery should be built within the city walls of Porto at his expense, and it was named Mosteiro de São Bento de Avé-Maria . The nearby monasteries in Rio Tinto , Vila Cova , Tarouquela and Tuías therefore dissolved and the new monastery founded in 1535.
With the rise of liberalism in Portugal in the 19th century, after the dissolution of the various orders, the government confiscated the goods and buildings of the church. In 1892, after the death of the last monk of the Mosteiro de São Bento de Avé-Maria , the monastery became the property of the state. While the monastery itself was demolished in 1894, the church remained standing until 1901.
Meanwhile, both the Linha do Minho from Viana do Castelo and the Linha do Douro from the Douro Valley were opened by the Royal Portuguese Railway Company ( Companhia Real dos Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses ) in 1875 , but the trains initially ended far from the city center distant Campanhã train station . The proposal for an extension was out of the question, but the problem was finding a suitable, new station building. It quickly became clear that the former monastery should give way to the new train station. While the demolition work was still going on, the Royal Portuguese Railroad extended the line from Campanhã to the city center on November 7, 1896, although there was no terminus yet. During this time the trains ended directly at the Praça da Liberdade , three small wooden houses housed the ticket office and waiting room.
The beginning of the work on the new train station, the cornerstone of which was a stone from the old monastery, and the three new inner-city tunnels Túnel da Quinta da China (96 meters), Túnel do Monte do Seminário (225 meters) and Túnel das Fontainhas / Túnel de São Bento (753 meters), which were necessary for smooth operation, was on October 22, 1900. The new station building, which covers an area of 551 square meters, was designed by the Porto architect José Marques da Silva . The artist Jorge Colaço was won over for the vestibule . He designed the entrance hall of the station with numerous, typically Portuguese tile images, the so-called azulejos . In the pictures, Colaço portrayed Infante D. Henrique during the conquest of Ceuta , João I's marriage with Filipa de Lencastre and the presentation of Egas Moniz to King Afonso VII of Castile and Léon .
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The station building in the shape of a "U" only went into operation on October 5, 1916 after a good 16 years of construction. Since then, trains from the Douro and Minho valleys, as well as Guimarães and Aveiro, have ended at the station. Long-distance trains only stopped at the station in exceptional cases. The main entrance is still on Praça de Almeida Garrett , the side wings run parallel to the streets Rua de Madeira and Rua de Loureiro .
In 1966, the state-owned Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses electrified the entire line between Lisbon and Porto, including the São Bento train station. Since 1997 the station building has been registered as a "building of public interest" ( imóvel deinterest público ) in the list of historical monuments of the IGESPAR .
Since 2005 there has been a direct transition between the suburban and regional trains of the Comboios de Portugal and the newly built Portos light rail system, the Metro do Porto . Line D, also known as Linha de Gaia , stops at the metro station of the same name . The underground station with two side platforms is like the others in the Portuens light rail network kept very simple, small tiles with different light color nuances determined the design. The design of the underground station was carried out by the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza Vieira , while almost all other underground city train stations in Porto were designed by Eduardo Souto de Moura .
At the end of 2008, Invesfer , a subsidiary of REFER , presented plans to expand the station into a shopping center. The Portuguese monument protection authority raised an objection to these plans.
Since the state-owned railway company Comboios de Portugal spun off the business areas, the subsidiary CP Urbanos do Porto , which is responsible for local and regional traffic in the Porto region, has its headquarters in São Bento station.
literature
- Rosa Gomes Estação de Porto S. Bento - Edifício de Passageiros - 75º Aniversário , Direcção de Operações Norte da CP, Porto, October 1991
Individual evidence
- ↑ Carla Sofia Luz: Invesfer estuda shopping para a Estação de S. Bento (investor examines shopping center for São Bento train station). Jornal de Notícias, November 23, 2008 ( Memento from July 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
Web links
- PDF file about the architecture of various Portuguese train stations, including the São Bento train station (1.66 MB) (Portuguese)
- Picture gallery with numerous other, also older photos of the train station (English)
- 360 ° view of the lobby of the station
- Image of the subway station on Flickr.com
Coordinates: 41 ° 8 ′ 43.5 " N , 8 ° 36 ′ 37.5" W.