Vila Nova de Cerveira-Goián Defensive Subsystem, at Minho River Valley, within the Restoration War (1640-1668)

This paper focuses on the Vila Nova de Cerveira-Goián Defensive Subsystem, within a wider structured defensive network that runs along the border course of the Minho River Valley. Built along the borders of the Portuguese territory during the Restoration War (1640-1668), this landscape results from the advances, retreats and constant actions of attack and defence from both Iberian armies, evidencing successive constructive campaigns characterised by the alternation of powers, armies and technical experts involved in its construction. In its complex stratigraphy of times, agents and materials, the subsystem under analysis includes 11 military constructions, among permanent and campaign constructions. To its study, applied methodology cross-references documentary resources with architectural survey and in situ observation, and is assisted by drawing, mapping a complex image of the subsystem’s vicissitudes, in order to tackle future perspectives concerning implicit theory, design and construction in its configuration.