Rehabilitation of the Palace of Saint John New budget of EUR 940,000

A rehabilitation of the Palace of São João Novo, a building that will host the central core of the Museum of Porto, is budgeted at 940 thousand euros and it should take more than a year, says announcement published today in Diário da República (DR).

Located in Largo de São João Novo, Miragaia, in the parish union of the historic center, the Palace of São João Novo has been in an advanced state of degradation for several years.

According to the announcement for a contest limited by prior qualification, today published by the municipal company of Management and Works of Porto (Go Porto), the basic price of the work is 940,000,00 euros and the deadline of execution of the rehabilitation project is 420 days.

In November last year, the mayor of Porto, Pedro Duarte (PSD/CDS-PP/IL), visited the building where the municipality plans to install the central nucleus of the Porto Museum, not having committed itself to dates for an intervention, but leaving the certainty that the municipality wants to “try to give future” to space.

“ In this sense, we are taking some initiatives already, namely with our municipal company Go Porto, to make at this stage a diagnostic study (...) which is essential so that we can then, in a second phase, have a project that can be sustainable and that, in fact, transform this space into a museum site”, I told journalists on November 14, a few days after taking office.

This is a project that has already been presented by Rui Moreira’s former executive.

In the November visit, the councilman with the culture pelouro, Jorge Sobrado, spoke of the future of space, recalling that the palace “was abandoned by the central state in the 1980s and 90s”, and assured that it will now reverse this “way of abandoning a remarkable and irresistible heritage value in the city of Porto”.

Not hiding it is a project “that will require patience, dedicated work and time”, the councilman did not advance with the budget needed to carry out the project.

“ It's early, it's early. And let us be frank: while there is the study, the museum program, the intervention program, the project... we are already talking about a few years and I mean that it would be completely extemporaneous to be pointing out a value that we would soon be reviewing, denying, changing”, justified.

In February 2024, the executive led by independent Rui Moreira approved to install the central nucleus of the Porto Museum on a floor of the Customs building, for a monthly rent of 15 thousand euros, until the recovery of the Palace of São João Novo was completed.

At the time, the municipality pointed out a duration of seven years for the undertaking, and in 2024 it would advance the study of pathologies of the building and, this year, it was planned to start the project of architecture and museology, followed by the projects of specialty and execution contest.

The management of the Palace of São João Novo, until then under the responsibility of the Regional Directorate of Culture of the North (DRCN), passed on December 6, 2023 to the municipality, with the formalization of the transfer agreement for a period of 50 years.