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The International Colloquim “Monastic Architecture and the City” will take place at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra (Portugal) on the 10th and 11th of October, 2013. This initiative aims to bring together Portuguese and foreign scholars interested in this subject.

The religious orders were once very widespread throughout the world. Today, one of the most visible aspects of that presence is their architecture. Monasteries, convents, colleges and other religious houses are important channels for the creation and interpretation and divulgation of art, architecture and culture, and indeed much study of the religious orders has taken place through those disciplines. These institutions also had an important territorial and urban dimension, however that has not been adequately valued. This symposium aims to explore precisely this perspective, looking at monastic architecture as an urban and territorial organism.

In Medieval Europe, the monastic orders played an important role in stabilizing territories, functioning as catalysts for the development of towns and cities. On the other hand, the mendicant orders, which appeared at the beginning of the 13th century, developed close ties with the urban world. This relationship, which began with the establishment of the first mendicant houses in Medieval European cities, intensified in the 16th century with the expansion in the number of new foundations driven by the reform of the Church. From this period onward, dense networks of convents developed in the towns and cities, actively contributing to their spatial transformation. Some cities, such as Lisbon, Seville and Naples, contained several dozen religious houses at their peak. Such institutions also proliferated in the context of the European overseas expansion, where the religious communities maintained and adjusted their influence in urban spaces. Finally, in the 19th century, many countries saw the dissolution of the religious orders and the destruction or repurposing of their buildings, though they nevertheless continued to exert a polarizing effect, directly or indirectly promoting alterations in the urban fabric in a process that is still ongoing today.

It is within this broad temporal and geographic framework that this symposium will discuss the role of the religious houses in processes of construction and transformation of territory, landscape and urban forms. Thus, we invite scholars interested in these topics to present contributions to this conference, which aims to create an opportunity for researchers from different disciplinary areas to meet and share their knowledge. We welcome proposals for papers on the following themes:

1. the medieval city and mendicant architecture;
2. religious houses and the urban space;
3. destruction, repurposing, and urban change;
4. the contemporary city and the monastic heritage.