Section on Architectural Records of the International Council on Archives
Abstract
The Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU - Overseas Historical Archive) holds Portuguese
architectural and also engineering archival records created and managed by the Colonial Public
Offices seated in Lisbon, dating back to the end of the 16th century to 1975. The archives from the
offices that performed duties in the Portuguese colonies remained there, even after their
independence from Portugal. Until recently, records dated from the mid 19th century onwards were
poorly identified, a panorama that changed over the last decade. These records are related to Angola,
Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissao, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mozambique, previous Portugese possessions
in India, Macao and East Timor. The AHU hosted two funded projects by the Portuguese
Foundation to Science and Technology (FCT) submitted by the Centre for Socioeconomic and
Territorial Studies from the Lisbon University Institute (DINÂMIA'CET-IUL). The participation of
the AHU in both projects allowed processing these records bulk. The first one was “The Colonial
Urbanization Offices”, a three year project which benefited from the collaboration of five archival
fellowships during nearly two years. The second project is the “Coast to Coast”, has a similar duration
to the previous and will be ongoing until December 2019, with the contribution of an archival
fellowship. Two archivists of the AHU participated in these projects as well, supervising the archival
processing as researchers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio