Utopia and reality: from Étiènne de Gröer to the late 20th century. Évora, Portugal

Abstract

The origin of the city of Évora dates back a few millennia, a fact that determined successive urban morphologies, which adapted diachronically to the needs of a sum of significantly diversified generations. The curtain wall was consolidated since the late fifteen century and during the 1940s it was integrated in the first Urbanization Plan of this city, designed by Étiènne de Gröer. This plan and the following integrated a spatial structure based on urban axes that date the Cardo and Decumamum of the Roman era. The reformulation of these urban axes determined the insertion of new dynamic functions, in the case of preexisting axes. The constitution of new urban fabric was achieved with the creation of new axes, obtained at the cost of drastic demolitions in the dense and consolidated hull. New urban centers were created extramural, contradicting the proposed by de Gröer, who advocated the establishment of a garden city surrounding the walled nucleus.