The city of Belém do Pará contains an area that harbors numerous stone monuments
which mark and identify the Belém’s 19th century society. This area is the Cemetery
of Soledade, which now function as an outdoor museum. Besides the weathering,
wich makes stones change constantly, Soledade has suffered with looting and
vandalism throughout its more than 150 years of existence. The presence of
deterioration on the stones of tombs and mausoleums of the first public cemetery in
Belém damages the quality and integrity of the material, interfering negatively in the
reading of the spatial image. The Cemetery has been listed as a National Heritage
Landscape since 1964 by IPHAN. Considering the importance of conservation and
restoration of ancient buildings and monuments to preserve the memory of a society,
this research sought to assess the deterioration by weathering and anthropogenic
origin in the different stones used in tombs and mausoleums of Cemetery of
Soledade. In order to generate subsidies for the conservation and restoration of
these stones, the characteristics of rocks used, its state changes and the causes of
deterioration were assessed. The analysis and technological investigations allowed
for the identification of granite, limestone and marble and for the determination of
agents and mechanisms of deterioration such as chemical action, high temperatures
and microbiological action. The diagnosis of the conservation condition throrough the
mapping of damages based on the Illustrated Glossary on Stone Deterioration
Patterns of ICOMOS confirmed the advanced level of the pathological manifestations
on the surfaces of stones, which also present lack of internal cohesion and
discontinuities according with ultrasound results. To contribute to future conservation
actions, restoration procedure tests to clean the monuments such as the polishing
and application of bentonite plaster were performed efficiently. The results highlight
the urgent need for conservation actions to reduce the rate of deterioration and
mitigate the current advanced state of the same. With the data obtained, this study
try to be an alert to the the situation of abandonment of the Cemetery of Soledade,
promoting the importance of keeping it preserved for future generations.
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