Capela de Santo Antônio do Engenho Novo, Colonial chapel in Goiana, Brazil.
Capela de Santo Antônio do Engenho Novo is a colonial chapel in Goiana built on a former sugar plantation estate. The structure features three main facades and three doorways opening into a single nave with a wooden choir loft.
Construction began in the 16th century on a sugar plantation owned by André Vidal de Negreiros, who fought the Dutch in Brazil. The building was altered over the years, and its current appearance reflects a 1654 renovation. Vidal de Negreiros was buried there in 1680, as a plaque at the start of the nave records. IPHAN listed the chapel in 1938.
The chapel stands on the Engenho Novo, a sugar plantation that belonged to André Vidal de Negreiros, the leader of the Pernambucan Restoration against Dutch rule. A plaque at the start of the nave marks his burial there in 1680. The simple single-nave interior, with a wooden choir and stair, reflects the modest worship of a rural estate chapel.
The chapel is located within the grounds of Usina Nossa Senhora das Maravilhas, surrounded by sugarcane fields and fruit trees in a rural setting. Getting there requires traveling inland from the coast, so planning ahead for transportation is helpful.
The chapel's interior holds a plaque at the start of the nave marking the burial of André Vidal de Negreiros, who fought Dutch colonization and died in 1680. The site sits among a handful of local workers' houses, surrounded by sugarcane fields and fruit trees, and no definitive restoration has been carried out since its 1938 listing.
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