The Vilalva Prize for the Recovery and Valorisation of Heritage, recently created by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was awarded to the project for the Treatment and Dissemination of the Sabugosa and São Lourenço House Library in Lisbon. This project was chosen from more than two dozen applications, based on the proposal of a jury made up of Dalila Rodrigues, António Lamas, José Pedro Martins Barata, José Sarmento de Matos and Manuel Costa Cabral.

The jury also proposed honourable mentions for two projects that stood out from all the proposals in the competition: the Project for the Inventory, Safeguarding, Restoration and Dissemination of Religious Cultural Heritage in Baixo Alentejo, by the Historical Heritage Department of the Diocese of Beja, and the Restoration Project for the Misericórdia de Arouca Chapel, by Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Arouca.

Created in honour of the philanthropist Vasco Vilalva, the prize, worth 50,000 euros, responds to the wishes expressed by his widow, Maria Tereza Burnay Eugénio de Almeida, to pay tribute to her husband’s memory by annually distinguishing an exemplary intervention project in the field of heritage (movable and immovable property of cultural value).