page_title: Sacavém
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sacavém / History
caption_attribution_description: The ancient Roman bridge over the Sacavém river.
context_page_description: Sacavém is a former civil parish in the municipality of Loures, Lisbon District, Portugal. In 2013, the parish merged into the new parish Sacavém e Prior Velho. It is a few kilometers northeast of the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. The civil parish covers an area of 4.09 km², and included as of 2001 Census a resident population of 17,659 inhabitants. The region is known for its famous ceramics industry.
context_section_description: Due to its strategic location, at the intersection of several roads from the north and east connecting to Lisbon, Sacavém was an important settlement during periods of Portuguese History, with some evidence extending back to pre-history. The Portuguese historian Pinho Leal wrote, in his chorography Portugal Antigo & Moderno (Ancient & Modern Portugal), that "Sacavém is incontestably a very old settlement, and already existed in the time of the Romans". The oldest known references date back to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic: three polished stone axes were discovered from the Bronze Age, and in the mid-1980s, excavations in the historical centre of the city revealed a cave with similar artifacts from this period.
  By the first century, Sacavém was already crossed by two major Roman roads that connected the region with the interior of the Iberian Peninsula:
  Via XV, connecting Olissipona (Lisbon) and Emerita Augusta (Mérida), by way of the important administrative centre of Scalabicastrum, today Santarém; and
  Via XVI, which connected Olissipona  to Bracara Augusta (Braga), capital of the Conventus bracarensis in the province of Gallaecia).
  Remnants of these two Roman viæ still exist under the modern roads Rua do António Ricardo Rodrigues and Rua do José Luís de Morais (the town's two main streets during the Middle Ages, which connected the upper and lower districts of Sacavém). Even during this period Sacavém was an important river-crossing; the Romans built a bridge that remained active until the 17th century (according to several sources, such as Francisco de Holanda or Miguel Leitão de Andrade). This bridge was a natural continuation of the roads and connected Sacavém with the northern river bank; therefore indirectly included in the famous Antonine Itinerary. The parish's coat-of-arms includes a symbolic depiction of the Roman bridge. Also in the vicinity, an epigraphic inscription is said to have existed (nowadays unknown), but referred to in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum). Various epigraphs have suggested that this totem identified the Roman magisterial administration of the rural locality.
  The Roman colony, which was centred on the bridge, was eventually succeeded by barbarians from south-eastern peninsula. The Alans were the first to occupy these lands (but left few remnants), and later the Visigoths, who constructed a chapel dedicated to Nossa Senhora dos Prazeres, on the sight of the medieval-era Chapel of Nossa Senhora da Vitória (Our Lady of Victory).
caption: The Roman bridge of Sacavém, drawn by Francisco de Holanda (c.1571) in Da fábrica que falece a cidade de Lisboa
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