The old Lagoa Council city hall is to become a museum after ratepayers funded a €123,000 work programme to remove the tiled roof and replace it with one made of sandwich panels in a lacquered steel finish.
The property once was a place of worship, then a prison, before becoming the headquarters of the Council and latterly, overspill office space for some Council services.
A new role has been announced for the building - it will become he first Portuguese museum dedicated to social movements.
The Council wishes to "relay the history of political ideas, governance and citizenship, starting from the social movements that took hold in Lagoa, Portugal, Europe and the world, in contemporary times.”
There is still no date for the creation of the displays inside the building.
This project was presented on January 16, during the commemorations of the 246 years since the founding of the municipality.
The new museum does have a name, MuCid – the Museum of Social and Political Movements and Citizenship.
The Council released the following words to mark its brave decision, "MuCid is positioned as a space of relationship with the community, where, in close association with museum content, collaborative and shared actions are projected in the domain of the exercise of civic, political and social rights and duties and of the collective expression organised in favour of social changes by different societies, locally, nationally and globally."
The launch apparently has, “opened the dialogue between the specialists who are part of the installation team of the museum and the population.”
Also still under discussion was how to adapt the building and "the preliminary analysis of the historical documents that supports the options outlined for the architecture and museum layout of the future space."
