))
The Municipal Historic Archive of Coimbra (AHMC) was established in 1927, as manuscript sector of the Municipal Library, intended to carefully conserve the parchments, manuscripts and other documents of City Council Archive. Currently, it is based at the Municipal Culture House of Coimbra on Pedro Monteiro Street.
Every document at AHMC can be consulted in the original format in the reading room intended for the purpose, by all the national and foreign citizens who have reached the age of 18.
The archive includes about 4 thousand volumes containing documents (book-bound sets, archived in folders or boxes) distributed over a chronological period between the thirteenth and the twentieth century.
Chronological Contextualization
In 1977, due to a great volume of archives accumulated in the library, under poor installation and consultation conditions, it has been deliberated to transfer the content to Almedina Tower, the ancient tower in the ramparts built around the town, over the Almedina Door, a meeting place of city council representatives from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, proceeding to its inauguration in 1978. However, various events have prevented the opening of the service to a public on this site before 1989, although the documentation could be consulted in the Municipal Library.
In 2001, the AHMC has left the premises of Almedina Tower, which has been converted into museum space. The Municipality of Coimbra was in the process of application to IAN/TT PARAM program for the construction of appropriate building for Municipal Archive in the local area.
Acquis
The collection stored at the AHCM mainly includes Documentation of the Fund of Municipality of Coimbra.
The administrative reforms between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, have extinguished many municipalities of the old term of the city of Coimbra, concentrating this documentation in the Municipal Archive. Consequently, there are various county funds important to local and regional history.
Besides the document sets, the Archive possesses different collections.
The most valuable are parchments, scroll fragments and topographical plans of the city of Coimbra.
The AHMC also possesses the “Doações” Collections, which, as the name implies, from offers made by individuals, who by making this gesture tried to preserve the documentation that, directly or indirectly, has been linked to the memory of the city.
For more information, visit the AHMC Guide and the AHMC Guide 20136.
Mission:
The Archive services has the fundamental attribution to implement and operate the archive policies of the municipality, exercising the following competencies:
a) Assure the documental patrimony management of the municipality in an integrated manner with the current archives of each department.
b) Collect, preserve, organize and disclose, in accordance with all the legal restrictions, the documents, regardless their format, drawn at any time by the Municipality of Coimbra in the performance of their duties.
c) Collect, preserve, organize and disclose the documents drawn by other institutions, already extinct (or not), whose duties have been entrusted to the City Council, or that have been for any reason made their property, even if drawn by other public or private entities;
d) Disclose the acquisition of documentary species and collections of interest to the history of the municipality;
e) Meet the information needs of municipal and public services;
f) Evaluate the documentation by selection and eliminating it in accordance with the regulations in force;
g) Conduct technical processing and organization of documentary collections;
h) Develop tools for archival descriptions which allow the access to the documents and information;
i) Disclose and organize actions of cultural divulgation of the entrusted patrimony: publishing of the unpublished historical sources, exhibitions, conferences or other activities.
j) Transfer the document format to safeguard their integrity, greater ease of access, consultation, reproduction and release to the public.