José Santana, Jardim dos Monumentos / Garden of Monuments

pictures (2024) are screen-prints from Google Streetview

Bragança is a municipality with about 34,750 inhabitants (2001) in the north of Portugal, near the border with Spain.

The city is bisected by the Fervença river and near a bridge in the city, along a bank of the river, there is an outdoor area belonging to a house, that in recent years has been transformed into an art environment.

Life and works

This art environment was created by José Santana, who was born in 1940.

In the 1960s when he was in his early 20s, Santana migrated to France where he would work for about 37 years, eventually as a team leader, in a company that built bridges, including very large ones such as a five-kilometer long railway bridge.

In France he met his wife, started a family with children and one of his first experiences with creativity was making nativity scenes for and with his daughters.

Once retired, he returned to Portugal, settled in Bragança and in 2005, at the age of 65, he was inspired to do something creative. 

Influenced by his time in France, that "something" became a replica of the Eiffel Tower, The replica was installed in the outdoor area of ​​his house, near the bridge over the Fervença river.

That was the beginning of the creation of an art environment, which in February 2014, when he was interviewed by the regional newspaper Nordeste, had already reached a considerable size.

Santana is a quiet, meticulous worker, who has a photographic memory, which comes in handy when making replicas of large buildings, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Praça da Sé in São Paulo, the Santo Condestável in Lisbon, the Taj Mahal in India, the Sanctuary of Fátima and the Outeiro Sanctuary in Bragança,

But the site also includes small-scale creations of, for example, biblical characters such as Joseph and Mary, or a scene of three friends around a table, where the beard of one of them is provided with real hair from Santana's own hairdo.

Documentation 

* Article (2014) in newspaper Nordeste

* Entry )2024) on the weblog of Alexandre Pomar, with a series of photos

José Santana

Garden of Monuments

City of Bragança, region Bragança, Portugal

can be seen from the street

Google  Streetview