AFA.2017.0146_Rehabilitation and Extension of Building Sito in Rua Nova de São Bento, 19 - Viana do Castelo

The property in question is located in the vicinity of the Monastery of St. Benedict of Viana do Castelo, very close to the Church of St. Benedict. The Monastery of St. Benedict of Viana do Castelo was female, belonged to the Order of St. Benedict and was under diocesan jurisdiction. It was a monastery of Benedictine nuns founded by a small group of devout ladies next to a pre-existing hermitage already dedicated to St. Benedict, authorized by the bishop of Ceuta in 1508. The monastery was then built by a subscription of fifty benefactors by order of the archbishop of Braga in 1546, the year in which some nuns came from Vitorino das Donas. It was a community of non-noble religious, orienting itself to the vocations of the aristocracy to the Benedictine monastery of Santa Ana of the same city. Enclosed or novitiate in 1833, it came to be secularized to the death of the last nun, in 1891.