The Town Hall of Santo Amaro ( pt, Paço Municipal, formerly the pt, Casa de Câmara e Cadeia) is an 18th-century municipal building in Santo Amaro,

Bahia Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 Federative units of Brazil, states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo (sta ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The building is located in the Historic Center of the city on the Praça da Purificação, a public square. The town hall sits opposite of the Parish Church of Our Lady of Purification and the Church of Our Lady of Protection faces the rear of the structure. The structure has two stories and covers . The façade is divided into three parts with a bell tower at center, a feature found in other town halls of the period in Bahia. The bell tower has a hemispherical dome. The town hall was completed in 1769 and served as both an administrative building and prison in the 18th century, but now serves as a municipal government office. The gravestone of Francisco Lourenço de Araújo (1816-1893), a hero of the Paraguayan War, is located in the courtyard of the Town Hall. Araújo was a wealthy

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...

plantation owner and styled the Baron of Sergy after the Paraguayan War. He was the only person to hold the title.

History

The village of Santo Amaro was established in 1727, and solicitation for funds for a town hall and prison soon followed. The building was inaugurated in 1769. Its design follows that of the follows the design of the Municipal Palace of Salvador, and resembles the Town Hall and Prison of Maragogipe (1737). The headquarters of Imprensa Oficial da Vila, a publishing company, began operations in the building in 1916. The jail, which had operated on the ground floor of the town hall since its inception, was transferred elsewhere in the early 20th century.

Structure

The Town Hall and Prison of Santo Amaro, like many others in Bahia, has two stories that surround a central rectangular patio. It covers . The façade of the town hall is divided into three parts vertically by

pilaster In classical architecture Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the ...

s. The central section has a

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

with a shallow

hemispherical A sphere () is a Geometry, geometrical object that is a solid geometry, three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three ...

dome, a feature found in the town hall of Salvador. The bell tower has stone-framed openings on four sides, as well as an oculus facing the town square. The side bodies of the structure have galleries with three arches at the ground level, and three corresponding pulpit windows above. The windows on the upper level have iron balconets, and span three sides of the building. The town hall has a

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

with eight slopes and glazed clay barrel tiles. The interior of the town hall retains some of its original design elements. It has a main staircase at the entrance. Some doorframes retain their original woodcarving.

Protected status

The Town Hall of Santo Amaro was listed as a historic structure by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage in 1941. Both the structure and its contents were included in the IPHAN directive under inscription number 285.

Access

The Town Hall of Santo Amaro functions as a municipal government building and may be visited.

References

{{commons category, Casa de Câmara e Cadeia (Santo Amaro) Portuguese colonial architecture in Brazil City and town halls in Brazil Government buildings completed in 1769 National heritage sites of Bahia Santo Amaro, Bahia