Feel Chaves

Features Feel Chaves

The Parish of Santa Maria Maior and its patrimonial wealth.Santa Maria Maior is the central parish of Chaves, with about 13,000 inhabitants, occupies a geographical area of ​​about 5.7 km, dispersed between its historical center and the peripheral districts.It is in this parish that a great percentage of the rich and vast Heritage that Chaves congregates.Promoting and protecting the memory of generations through monuments, sites and landscapes is a very important challenge, which has been recognized as extremely important.
However, the memory of a people is much more than what they have visibly left us, their works and their historical facts, there is much more than that in the heritage left by our ancestors: the traditions, the knowledge, the festivals and pilgrimages, the legends and beliefs of the people, the soul of those who inhabit the sites.The immaterial heritage is constituted by a diversity of elements that make up a legacy full of meanings and identities that carry with it that which is the essence that characterizes us, which makes us the sum of who we truly are.In times when uniformity and globalization gain space between us, homogenizing identities, more and more, the culture of memory is losing space.
Memories are important for our understanding of time and space, for interpreting our individuality and for framing it in a wider context.Between the aggressiveness of our landscape and the appeal to the mythical and legendary medieval imaginary, the region of Chaves and in particular the area corresponding to the Parish of Santa Maria Maior, encloses an immensity of characteristics liable to deserve the best attention with regard to Cultural Heritage Immaterial.
Traditional knowledge, oral traditions, expressions of life, knowledge, stories and folktales are the fundamental pillars of the culture and identity of each region.It has been our concern to value the tourism and the historic center of flaviense, reviving stories and legends, crafts and know-how to do, appealing to the creativity and imagination of the intervenors.We propose here the creation of small "Creative Ecosystems", which are characterized by leveraging talents, places and economy, generating cultural diversity and guaranteeing sustainable development.Cities are undoubtedly key entities with respect to the development of economic activities in general, and Tourism in particular.Revitalizing the center of a city, in particular a historical center, includes several structuring elements, among which culture, is undoubtedly the most important, since it is in it that all symbology, all the identity references that constitute it, are concentrated.
We aim above all to structure a culturally active historical center, diversified in the answers and accessible to all types of audiences.This is our Parish, these are our people and our Heritage that we want to see communicated, shared and visited by all!Welcome to Santa Maria Maior!