One of Portugal’s most amazing hidden gems lies just beyond a bridge in Coimbra, Portugal: the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha. Visiting the Monastery of Santa Clara a Velha is one of the best things to do in Coimbra, Portugal. The architecture is beautiful and so well preserved.The first building of the monastery was founded by Dona Mor Dias in 1286, but the Santa Cruz monks opposed to the existence of a new feminine monastic house and so the community was closed a few years later. However, in 1314, Elizabeth of Aragon reopened the monastic house and the Poor Claire nuns returned to Coimbra. The old structure which still exists today was a part of the great undertaking sponsored by the Saint Queen.
Built on the left bank of the Mondego River, the Santa Clara Monastery was always a victim of recurrent water invasions. Floods determined the timing of the construction and the price of the monastery rose progressively even leading to the construction of another floor. Over the next centuries, the life of the nuns was conditioned to the behaviour of the river and, finally, in 1677, the community left the space in order to occupy the building of the Santa Clara a Nova Monastery, which was built by order of King John IV in the opposite bank of the Mondego River.
Although it underwent recovery works in 1930, the determination of the Mondego River waters kept the old monastery in ruins and surrounded by a certain romantic aura. However, in 1991, an ambitious recovery and revaluation project for the gothic monastic space was started under the coordination of the archaeologist Artur Côrte-Real. Thanks to the construction of a peripheral water containment curtain, the intervention allowed workers to uncover the lower part of the church and the cloister and gather a very important collection which is a material evidence of its past.
