The history of cities and architecture is often treated as a matter of solid ground, with the ocean, when adjacent, seen as a frontier, the coastline acknowledged as a limit towards the unknown. This essay is an attempt to counter such narratives, instead treating the urban history of Ílhavo – sited on the Portuguese Atlantic coast – from the perspective of the sea. This maritime portrait offers a novel insight into Ílhavo’s urban history, balancing the agricultural background that defined its growth until the eighteenth century with accounts explaining territorial transformations driven by other dynamics that have been until now neglected.

This essay is the result of a short-term commission by the Municipality of Ílhavo municipality, given in 2019 to the research centre at the University of Minho and elaborated within the framework of the Maritime, Military and Industrial Heritage of the Atlantic Area Coast (MMIAH) List, produced in turn by the local authorities in the context of an Interreg Atlantic Area project funded by the European Union. The commission encompassed an evolutionary account of Ílhavo’s landscape to serve as a frame to the heritage list, the MMIAH entries being supplied by the municipality with the list featuring in the illustrations and the chronology at the end of this book. We would like to thank the municipality for entrusting us with the responsibility for the evolutionary report and to gratefully acknowledge the generous support and encouragement, as well the insightful comments and corrections, that the municipal staff, the Centro de Documentação de Ílhavo and the Ílhavo Maritime Museum provided us with in our researches.

This is not a definitive history of Ílhavo and its maritime landscape, instead it aims to open what we anticipate to be a fruitful line of inquiry that can reposition our perspective on urban history. The ocean, rather than being a blank space situated in contradiction to the shore, is a complex and animated environment that shapes – while at the same time itself being shaped – the inland places we inhabit.

Facing environmental predicaments, we are obliged to reinvent the relationship between architecture, urban planning and the planet as a whole. The capacity to grasp the physical phenomena and the transformation of terrestrial territories with respect to major ecological and environmental factors – as is the case with the ocean and its marine and maritime cultures – is a crucial step to reconsidering our relation to the places we live. Despite its modesty, we hope this maritime portrait serves as a contribution in this direction.

Download the book in PDF format through this link.