Casa Amarela

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The Casa Amarela (Yellow House) in the 1920s
Entrance to the National Mint Museum (2010)

The Casa Amarela , in English "Yellow House", is a building on Praça 25 de Junho in the Central district of the Mozambican capital Maputo . Erected in the 18th century, the building was influenced by both Portuguese and Indian architecture and is considered the oldest preserved in the city. Today it houses the National Money Museum ( Museu Nacional da Moeda ).

history

The year of construction of the "Yellow House" built by Portuguese soldiers is dated to the year 1776, although the exact details vary in this regard. It is believed that it initially served as a prison before the neighboring fortress ( Fortaleza Nossa Senhora da Conceição ) was built at a later date.

Around 1860 an Indian trader bought the building, had it rebuilt and given its present form in order to initially use it as a warehouse and office. Since then it has had an “L” -shaped floor plan with a small courtyard. It only has a flat roof. Because of the ocher-colored, unadorned outer walls, the building was quickly given the name “A casa amarela” (The Yellow House). Since then, the entrance to the house has been on the side facing the square.

Although Lourenço Marques was not yet the capital of the colony at the time, the then governor of the colony, José Rodrigues Coelho do Amaral , bought the house in 1873 to use it as an office or general secretariat ( Secretaria-Geral ). The building later served as an art gallery for the Lourenço Marques artist scene, which was particularly active in the 1950s and 1960s.

With the independence of Mozambique in 1975, the building initially lost its function as an administrative center. For the one-year anniversary of the introduction of the Mozambican currency Metical , on January 15, 1981, the Mozambican government opened the National Money Museum ( Museu Nacional da Moeda ) there. Since then, the museum has shown the history of currencies in southern Africa; it has a base of over 4,300 collection exhibits , such as coins , coin-like objects, banknotes , medals and a further 1,000 objects related to Mozambique. The museum is managed by the Eduardo Mondlane University .

Since 2011 the building has been in the preselection for a list of monuments for the city of Maputo. The building is registered with the number 31979 in the Portuguese monument database Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico , which also includes monuments to former Portuguese colonies.

Literature on the museum

  • O guia do museu / Museu Nacional da Moeda . Maputo, RP de Moçambique, 1983, 51 p. (Museum guide)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c José Manuel Fernandes: Casa de Ferro. In: Patrimónia da Influência Portuguesa (HPIP). Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, January 14, 2013, accessed December 18, 2014 (Portuguese).
  2. ^ A b Tiago Lourenço: Casa de Ferro. In: Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA). 2011, accessed December 18, 2014 (Portuguese).
  3. ^ Museu Nacional da Moeda | Casa Amarela. Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, 2014, accessed December 18, 2014 (Portuguese).
  4. ↑ Title recording ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the catalog system of the UCT libraries (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / aleph20.calico.ac.za

Web links

Coordinates: 25 ° 58 ′ 25.2 ″  S , 32 ° 34 ′ 10.7 ″  E