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New Technologies
The database of the Armoury of
the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa
T
he Armoury of the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa is a private
collection that may be visited in the context of the
museum of the House of Braganza. This collection is
composed of nearly 4000 works from a variety of
chronological (mainly 16th to 20th centuries) and
geographical provenances, mostly related to Portuguese
national history and, above all, the House of Braganza which
reigned from 1640 to 1910.
The variety and characteristics of the ensemble, largely
dedicated to hunting and all the implements involved,
demanded an information approach that would facilitate the
museological management of the collection. Given the fact
that this collection is only part of a much wider ensemble,
the dilemma was to adopt the same inventory program
developed to accommodate the needs of art collections, and
so potentially deficient when it came to the specificities of
the Armoury collections, or to invest in the construction of a
new, specific database.
The option chosen was to adopt what we would call a
generalist program – In Arte. In close connection with the
company that designed the program, we have identified the
main specificities of the collection and built the thesaurus
necessary to cover the wide range of objects and their
characteristics. Occasionally there had to be compromise
ISSUE 06 MAGAZINE 39