Draft:Afonso Henriques Theatre

The Afonso Henriques Theatre, officially Dom Afonso Henriques Theatre, in Teatro Dom Afonso Henriques, was the main theatre of Guimarães from 1853 until its replacement by the Jordão Theatre in the late 1930s.

Description
The building's facade was symmetrical and featured three stories. The ground floor consisted of a series of rectangular doorways, seven in total, each with a simple stone frame. The central doorway was more prominent as it featured a double stone frame with a curved top.

On the first floor, the central section had a square window surrounded by a strip of granite. Flanking this central section were three pairs of windows, each set within a granite frame. On top of them were small circular windows with a granite frame that connected with the square window's bellow.

The second floor mirrored the first in its window arrangement, with rectangular windows above each of the lower floor's. The central section had a balcony with iron railing, supported by corbels and accessed by a door with a decorative stone frame. The outermost windows on this floor also featured iron railings and granite balconies. The roof was paved with roof-tiles and it was separated with the facade by a cornice with two stone urns at it's extremities. The central part was shaped like a semi-circle and it had a stone coat of arms under it.

Predecessors
Before the construction of the Afonso Henriques Theatre there was the Count of Vila Pouca Theatre, located at the Campo da Feira. Shows and plays were performed regularly at this theatre to aid the construction efforts of the Santos Passos Church, still in construction.

The Count of Vila Pouca Theatre was burnt down on the night of 18 January 1841, leaving Guimarães without a permanent theatre. Even during its active years, this theatre was never meant to serve the 7000 people that lived in the city at the time and, since 1836, the progressive forces of Guimarães demanded the creation of a project to construct a theatre that can accommodate the city’s needs.

Construction and inauguration
In 1853, construction of a new theatre started at the Campo da Feira after 12 years without a permanent theatre in the city. During it's construction on 5 July 1854, five people died after an accident involving the collapse of the scaffolding. On 31 May 1855, its reported that the construction of the theatre was being accelerated so that it's inauguration would occur in the night of the acclamation of King Pedro V.

This theatre ended up being inaugurated with a masquerade ball on 12 August 1855, and it was baptized with the name of Portugal's first king, Dom Afonso Henriques, officialising the name Theatro Dom Affonso Henriques, later modified due to various orthographic reforms.

Active years
The Afonso Henriques Theatre, similarly to its predecessor, also contributed in the completion of the Santos Passos Church by donating the funds they received from plays and magic lantern slide shows. On 22 April 1863, the play “O Veterano Mateus”, the song “O Sebastianista” and the comedy “A Actriz” were played exclusively to raise money for the construction of the church's bell towers. There were many in attendance and the city's music played outside the theatre.

The first 10 years of activity of the Afonso Henriques Theatre were very busy, with over 220 theatrical performances by nacional theatre companies. Compared with other two big cities at the time, Coimbra and Aveiro, Guimarães was the city, between these three, that welcomed the most professional theatre companies to its theatres. This is unexpected as both Coimbra and Aveiro had multiple theatrical locations, while Guimarães only had the Afonso Henriques Theatre.

On 26 February 1866, the Artistic Association of Guimarães was installed at the Afonso Henriques Theatre and would remain there until their headquarters were transferred to the Gil Vicente Theatre a few decades later.

Periodic inspections were regularly conducted at the theatre, as documented in a logbook that recorded events from 2 August 1856, to 30 June 1875. This logbook reveals that the theatre was frequently rented for a variety of events, including theatrical shows, masquerade balls, and both dramatic and comedic plays. It also reveals that the amount of events decreased throughout the years.



By order of the administrative authority, the theater was inspected on 11 April 1888, with nothing out of the ordinary to report. The theatre was the gathering place after the Pregão, one of the festivities of the Nicolinas, was over during the years that it was active.

In Guimarães, the first permanent cinematographic screening room was opened in March 1909, on the premises of the Afonso Henriques Theatre. Later, in January 1912, the company that owned the cinematic equipment and screening room at the Gil Vicente Theatre relocated to the Afonso Henriques Theatre, evolving in 1914 to the “Cinema High-Life”. In November 1919, it turned into a fully operational cinema, named Vimaranes-Cine, replacing the previous cinematic establishment in the building.

Closure, demolition and aftermath
On 6 May 1933, a decree authorizing the Câmara Municipal of Guimarães to expropriate the Afonso Henrique Theatre, in order to extend the S. Dâmaso Street to the Campo da Feira, was passed. On 18 February 1936, the Câmara Municipal of Guimarães met in extraordinary session to decide on the construction of a new theater. The idea was to rebuild the Affonso Henriques Theatre, which was still standing because the street provided for in the 1933 decree had not been torn up. No solution to the problem emerged from this meeting, as rumors soon began to circulate that the reconstruction of the old theater was stuck. It officially ceased operations and closed that same year. It’s poor state already dates back to 1919 when it was described:

"Guimarães has a theatre like all the lands of this world, a theatre named after Afonso Henriques. However, this one offers no guarantees against disaster. Apart from the fact that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, that should be required in a theatre, it currently has the serious inconvenience of not having a single wooden plank that hasn't showed signs of old age. The whole place is rotten. One day it'll all fall down and poor of those who are having a party inside when that happens."

With the expropriation of the theatre, its long-lasting decaying state and the construction of its so much announced successor starting on 22 February 1937, the demolition of the Afonso Henriques Theatre became inevitable. It was demolished just a few years later.