The Açude Velho in Campina Grande/PB was listed in 2001, as a result of political and social efforts to attribute values and meanings that characterized an express project of patrimonialization of the space. This work, therefore, analyzes the political and social actions and practices of patrimonialization that culminated in the landmarking of the Açude Velho in Campina Grande/PB, between 1964 and 2001, so that the main question that drove our research was how a fetid and ugly water reservoir was transformed more than a hundred years later into the city's main postcard.