:: tongobriga ::

Legal measures to protect Freixo’s Archaeological Area were set up, requiring binding opinions and lawful authorizations for all the interventions of agricultural, social, handicraft, building construction character and others activities. These measures enable the gradual “reconstruction” of the landscape, following the rhythm of the research and conservation of the millenary spaces that the population defined, worked and used for its different activities. Here, as we reconstruct the past everyday, (by excavating and uncovering the ruins and the remains associated to them) we try to restore the integrity of the Roman Town upon which a mediaeval population has settled and whose economic activities were still evident in the 18th and 19th centuries, through the periodical markets that are presently reminded by the ruins of the small shops of the “Rua dos Judeus”, in the village centre. The present village follows all these signs. Being completely inserted in the Archaeological Area, it constitutes the last stratum of the chronological sequence that takes us with authenticity to the 20th century, thus putting on our shoulders the responsibility to redeem the rest of the unknown past and, at the same time, the task of building the Cultural Landscape of the 21st century in a harmonious way.