The oldest chapel in the Indian Ocean was built by the Portuguese 500 years ago and will be renovated in 2023, with a project full of history and details.
The rehabilitation project drew on the mysticism and amazement that the building provokes in those who visit, explains the architect who designed the work. “During days when I was in the chapel, I could witness visitors prostrating themselves, kneeling down, making prayers, even some who were not religious admired the imposingness of the place,” architect Muahammad Cássimo tells Lusa.
“They felt the weight” of the site’s history.
It was on a starry moonlit night that he thought that “with a discreet, yellow light”, the chapel would gain an environment to the visitors’ reactions, in an environment that would be accessible during night visits.
The lighting is planned and budgeted for and will become a reality. Besides this, the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte boasts several rare features, capable of causing astonishment.
It is the oldest masonry construction on the entire African coast of the Indian Ocean, the oldest European building standing today, set on a coral bank, right on the edge of the sea (on a high tide in 2021, the waves covered it, says the guide) and was built even before the fortress of Mozambique Island was built, which looks more like a giant beside it.
The building withstood attacks from the Portuguese armada and cyclones, but now has its base gutted by five centuries of tides and its skeleton corroded by saltpeter, impregnated by the wind.
The governments of Portugal and Mozambique and construction company Mota Engil signed a memorandum of understanding in February for the rehabilitation that is due to start in May.
“One of the biggest problems is the faults in the foundations”, whose wall “has been dismantled”, leaving its support threatened by “holes that reach three metres” deep, through which the waves enter and remove the embankments, leaving the stones without support.
In the extreme, if nothing was done, part of the chapel could collapse in the waves.
But the restoration of the base shows how the work will have several peculiarities: in that section it will only be possible to work at low tide and with extra care.
In addition, in the chapel, “there are architectural elements that we could even call archaeological” and for the recovery of which the presence of Mozambican and Portuguese specialists is required, such as a walled tomb that was vandalized.
“There are 12 tombs here, all of important people,” explains Momade Raisse, guide of the fortress of São Sebastião and the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte.
He points to some and recites the descriptions with which he receives visitors: “a bishop buried in 1588”, a “governor-general of the 19th century” and another tomb “that we cannot distinguish because the writing disappeared a long time ago”.
Every day, from 08:30 to 16:30, it is possible to visit the chapel, but it is at weekends that visits usually appear, he describes to Lusa.
Raisse doesn’t know when was the last time a mass was held there, but the mysticism persists and there were already visitors leaving money on the altar stone, as in an offertory, although the interior is equally naked, corroded and stained by humidity.
The guide is careful where he puts his feet in the “narthex” area, that is, a kind of wide porch whose roof collapsed some time ago, at the entrance to the chapel, in the same place where the remains of a pulpit and a wall, whose stone seems to have been brought from Portugal, remain.
“All the decisions in the recovery project were designed to give greater durability” to the chapel, explains Muhammad Cássimo, who hopes that “future generations” will reinforce the care of maintenance of a valuable historical heritage and with strong potential for tourist attraction.
“We are introducing some techniques, because we don’t know if we will have another opportunity like this” as part of the recovery work, he told Lusa.
For example, the mortar of the plaster will be prepared to last longer and mobile tops are planned to avoid the entrance of water during high tides.
Cyclones that have always been part of the Mozambican coast are now “more frequent” and the project reinforces this resistance to bad weather, he added.
The architect and the chapel are old acquaintances.
Muhammad Cássimo, 38, is a native of Mozambique Island and only left the province to graduate in architecture, a path he chose because as a boy he played among ruins of buildings – the island was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1991 and the fortress and chapel are just two of several classified buildings.
“My goal: the more houses I rehabilitate, the better. When I finished the course, I came back,” he tells Lusa, a return in which he accompanied the architect José Forjaz in the rehabilitation of the chapel in 1997.
He has already spent many hours there, says he even mapped fissures that he later saw grow and become very visible cracks.
Lusa
