El Ferrol of the Illustration Historical Heritage
SpainMinistry of Culture
Galician
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Description
"Ferrol of the Enlightenment" is a historic hereditary "ensemble" which has a certain unity as a result of its design and construction "ex novo": unity in space which is represented by the geography of the Ferrol estuary, unity in time of its projects and material execution which belong to the second part of the XVIIIth century and its continuity in the XIXth century, aesthetic unity produced by its style and academic technology (from the Enlightenment). This ensemble can be divided into three functional unities that are tallied with the scheme of ideal port city of the Classicism, that is to say port-arsenal, residential city and defences. So, we can take into account the following ensembles or subensembles in series: Arsenal of Spanish Navy and Civil Arsenal. The fortified city and its urbanism, Defences on the mouth of the estuary and on the outside coast. These subensembles mainly contain more than fifty constructions of port and military architecture and engineering. For that reason, this unitary work of the Enlightenment is completed by a great movable heritage linked to its design and execution, standing up plans and documents of the time consisting of more than one thousand.
Statements of authenticity and/or integrity
The authenticity of the ensemble of Ferrol of the Enlightenment is appreciated in all the main constructions of engineering and architecture since they are conserved with the design and materials of the XVIIIth century, without mimetic additions, pointing up the quality of the original granite stone.
The integrity of the ensemble is appreciated on the whole of the conserved properties and on the untouched conserved parts as it did not suffer either wars or disasters and it has had a good maintenance.
Comparison with other similar properties
Ferrol of the Enlightenment keeps a representative example of the ideal port of the XVIIIth century with the novelty of the basin and breakwaters over the sea in the XVIIIth century, improving on size and quality other similarity properties as the Arsenal of Venice, Suomenlina (Finland), Karlskrona (Sweden) already declared "Heritage World".
Ferrol was in the XVIII th century the optimum port, as Rochefort was (in the tentative French list) in the previous century.