Moura Municipality (Portugal)

Last modified: 2001-09-14 by antonio martins
Keywords: moura | coat of arms | tower (balck) | woman | mooress | legend | canting |
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It is a quite typical portuguese municipal flag, with the coat of arms centered on a background gyronny (city rank) of black and yellow. The coat of arms is argent, a tower sable with windows and door or issuant from a base vert on which lyes the corps of a muslim young lady argent. Mural crown argent with five visible towers (city rank) and white scroll reading in black upper case letters "NOT�VEL VILA DE MOURA" (upper line) and "CIDADE" (lower line).
Ant�nio Martins, 24 Feb 2000

This coat of arms depict the final scene from a local legend, which tells about a moorish princess who throw herself from the tower where she was imprisoned. The toponym also refers to this legend, "moura" meaning "moorish woman" ("mooress"?).
Ant�nio Martins, 24 Feb 2000

The weird text on the scroll, "Noteworthy town of Moura / City", has a story, also: when Moura recieved the title "noteworthy" (I dont know why), it was a town. When, much later (in the 1980ies, I guess), it become a city, it was not possible to change the wording of that honourable mention, and so the word "city" was dully added. A similar case is Vila Franca de Xira, but this adopted a more elegant solution, with a folded, longer scroll and text in one line.
Ant�nio Martins, 24 Feb 2000

Moura municipality had 17 090 inhabitants in 1990, and it is divided in 8 communes, covering 958 km². It belongs to the Beja District and to the old province of Baixo Alentejo.
Ant�nio Martins, 24 Feb 2000