Located near the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora de Aires (Our Lady of Aires) is a fountain associated with one of the Lady’s interventions for the benefit of Viana’s people.
According to information conveyed by Fr. Francisco de Oliveira, in 1639 there was an intense drought that extinguished the fountains and wells of the village. However, when the shrine’s female hermit and her husband dug around the church’s vicinity, water sprouted from the soil at the same place where afterwards the fountain was made, completed on 12^th May 1640. According to the same author, the water that flows in the fountain comes from an ancient Roman aqueduct located behind the hermitage of Senhor Jesus do Cruzeiro (Lord Jesus of the Cross).
The fountain has a simple rectangular backrest, torn by a protruding frieze, on which stands a triangular pediment with pinnacles in masonry that integrates a marble headstone evocative of the Restoration of Portugal’s Independence, and a sonnet composed in 1640 by Dr. Domingos Coelho Reidono, born in Viana, judge at the House of Supplication (old Supreme Court of the Portuguese Kingdom) in Lisbon, who was Head Master of the village’s Misericórida. Attached to it is a vast tank-drinking fountain in triangular form, and is adorned by three anthropomorphic frowns from which springs the water that for centuries has quenched men and animals.
 

Protection: Included in the protection zone of Nossa Senhora de Aires Sanctuary.

REFERENCES
ESPANCA, Túlio, Inventário Artístico de Portugal: Distrito de Évora: Concelhos de Alandroal, Borba, Mourão, Portel, Redondo, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Viana do Alentejo e Vila Viçosa, Lisboa, Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes, 1978,Tomo IX, Vol. 1.
http://www.monumentos.pt
PÁSCOA, Marta Cristina, Fr. Francisco de Oliveira – a escrita da História Regional e Local no século XVIII, vol. II, Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 2002 (Tese de Mestrado policopiada)
SEIXAS, Raquel, O Santuário de Nossa de Aires: arquitectura e devoção (1743-1792), Lisboa, Universidade Nova, 2013 (Tese de Mestrado policopiada).