Since the Middle Ages the Town Council, as its name indicates¹, was in a building that distinguished itself from the others for looking like a palace, where the council of good men assembled, that is, the group of the richest and most powerful men of a locality who had been elected to decide on matters of the administration of the people and the surrounding territory under their rule. With the passing of the centuries, the designation Câmara Municipal (municipal chamber) became more common, although the denomination Paços do Concelho never disappeared, being that the two forms of identification are constituted as synonymous. The denomination câmara (chamber) is also medieval and it meant room, division, in this case, where the municipality, the county, the group of men that governed assembled. The Town Council, together with the prison and the pillory, were the symbols of municipal power, for until the 19^th century, the municipal chambers also had the power to judge and punish criminals, for example with the application of physical punishments or imprisonment.
The oldest Town Council of Viana that is known used to operate inside the castle. According to Espanca, on the left side of whoever enters through the door facing north. This space coincides with the location pointed by Francisco Baião as being the primitive parish church of the village, Santa Maria de Foxem (13^th century). Hence, it is supposed that one of the uses must have followed the other: first it was a space of worship, with the chamber assembly taking place eventually in the place that later gave rise to the church of Misericórdia, or in the parish’s churchyard; and then a local government space, after disaffection of the cult with the construction of the new parish church of Nossa Senhora da Anunciação (Our Lady of Annunciation). What is certain is that that in the Town Council, in the castle, Filipe II of Spain was acclaimed king of Portugal, in 1580. If the location attributed to the municipal chamber inside the castle is correct, of it remain two ground rooms with Gothic cracks, accessed from the outside through a marble portal.
The municipal chamber remained inside the castle until about 1683, at which time, eventually for lack of space, the new Town Council was built at the southern top of the square, concluded, according to Espanca, in 1701. This new work coincides with the coming to Viana of its first outside judge, Dr. Manuel Pereira Peres. Until then, there were in Viana land judges, who were born in the village and were members of the municipal chamber, elected locally. The outside judge was a magistrate from another locality directly appointed by the king to exercise justice, theoretically in a more impartial way in each land. In the new Town Council, the upper level was the governing and hearing space (court) and in the lower floor was a prison for men and women, which determined the placement of grids on the windows.
In the façade the fountain da Praça, which was included in the building’s construction, stands out; the municipal coat of arms of "Vianna de Foxen", which presumably originates from the old Town Council in the castle and will have been transferred to here during the new construction; and the plaque evoking the restoration of the County on 13^th January 1898. It should be noted that in this plaque the date of 1255, which is indicated as that of the attribution of the village’s first Charter, results from a mix-up with the village of Fonsim (Aguiar da Beira).
In the building, today very different from its original characterization, other services have also operated over time, such as the "water workshop" and the "house of balance measurement" on the ground floor; a cultural centre on the first floor, after the exit of the Chamber services; the Library, installed in 1980, to which was later annexed the Municipal History Archive, the only two services that are still found here today. After the “water workshop" and the "house of balance measurement" closed, an IPJ Centro de Apoio à Juventude (Youth Support Centre) (until 1999), the Tourism Office (now transferred to the castle) and the Economic Development Support Office were installed on the ground floor.
Already in the 1970s, once again for reasons of lack of space, the Town Council was moved to a larger building on Brito Camacho Street. This house, sold to the state in 1972, was owned by the Cabral family since it was acquired by Luís de Sousa Fernandes Cabral and his wife D. Maria Alice Piçarra Cabral. The Cabral family, present in Viana since at least the beginning of the 17^th century, was one of the most prominent families of the locality due to their economic power, mostly resulting from the possession of countless and vast estates, which required the employability of a large numbers of workers. Their economic power promoted an equivalent social prestige, with several of its members exercising, for centuries, the most important positions in several local institutions (Chamber, Misericórdia, other institutions of social support, etc.), as was common in any locality of the country until the Revolution of 25^th April 1974.
The Morais Cardoso Cabral coat of arms’ painting, as well as the pictorial decoration of naturalistic friezes and medallions with busts of Greek-Roman characters, of neoclassical appearance, that are on the first floor, are works of the painter and tile-maker José Basalisa (1871-1961). They were executed by order of Luís de Sousa Fernandes Cabral, above mentioned, farmer and local politician, who owned the property.
On the ceiling of the ground floor room, there is also an 18^th century coat of arms, also restored by Basalisa.

1 -  Original name is “Paços do Concelho”, which means “Palace of the Municipality”.

REFERENCES
BAIÃO, Francisco, “Em demanda da primitiva Igreja Matriz de Santa Maria de Foxem”, Boletim Municipal do Município de Viana do Alentejo, nº 80, Setembro de 2013, pp. 40-41.
BAIÃO, Francisco, “A Herança dos Riba de Vizela: as armas da vila de Vianna de Foxen”, Boletim Municipal do Município de Viana do Alentejo, nº 81, Fevereiro de 2014, pp. 32-33.
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/