The University is one of the oldest Universities in Europe. It was founded in Lisbon on 1290 and it was definitely transferred to Coimbra on 1537, being established in the Royal Palace. In this place the romans built the Pretorium, which already says a lot about the strategic importance and therefore the military importance of the local. After that it was the local of the Arab Citadel which would has a geometric configuration similar to the actual configuration. With the Christian Conquer it became to be the Palace of the King Afonso, which had a profound reconstruction made by the King Dom Manuel, who also ordered the building of the Chapel of S. Miguel. The building only became to belonging to the University on 1597 in which date this Institution acquired the building from the Spanish Monarch Filipe II (I of Portugal). It was in this époque that were born new structures next to the Palace: The Library, the Tower, the Via Latina and the Porta Férrea. Interactive visit here.

The ESEnfC has 20 modern laboratories, equipped with innovative learning technologies. Take a look at the laboratories here.
In these laboratories it is possible to simulate a wide variety of clinical scenarios and, therefore, improve the technical competences before the contact with the real users.
Here it is possible to develop skills in the areas of Maternal Health and Obstetrics, Rehabilitation, Paediatrics, Geriatrics, training of daily living activities, intermediate and intensive care, and urgency/emergency situations.
Our laboratories are also places of research and development, oriented towards innovation, other ways of care provision and teaching methods.
Here we will present some of these laboratories, of which the vast majority is part of the new Clinical Practice Simulation Centre.

The Pediatric Hospital of Coimbra is located in the Alto da Baleia, parish of Santo António dos Olivais, and is one of the health institution that constitutes the recently created CHUC (Centro  Hospitalar Universitário of Coimbra).

Opened on 1977, by the founder of the project, Santos Bessa e Bissaya Barreto, the Pediatric Hospital of Coimbra has worked during 33 years in a building that was initially a convent and after a women and children sanatory. 

During these years was target of many improvements; attemps finding for the sucessives governments to  bridge deficiencies and insufficiencies, basically at the level of physical conditions.

On 2011 January, after a long historical of setbacks, the Paediatric Hospital changes to the new building constructed from the basis to that effect.
It is a Public Hospital, included in the National Health Service. It provides direct and entire assistance (children and teenagers until 18 years) to the whole population of the Country Centre Region, assuming itself as a reference hospital before the district hospitals in the region and before the Health‘s Centres of the Municipality of Coimbra, establishes itself  a national paediatric reference for the specific pathologies as well.
It has an enormous diversity of clinic specialities, including a General Emergency, an Operating Room with 6 rooms, being considered the best on a national level, 163 beds distributed by several services such as Medicine, Surgery, Orthopaedics, Neurosurgery, Oncology and one modern unity of intensive cares. Apart from the Internment, it offers many services such as Child-Psychiatry, Rehabilitation and Physic Medicine and Imaging.
It is an Institution with differentiated functions in the Health Care Services, in the pre and postgraduate training and in the scientific research.