Pontevedra: the granite old town to the Peregrina: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The car-free granite core and the pilgrim chapel
Pontevedra began pedestrianizing its old town in 1999, and you walk it past market squares, small chapels, noble pazos and the granite bridge that carries pilgrims over the Lérez.
The stops
The square takes its name from the forges that stood here in the Middle Ages, and in the 15th century it was enlarged for the Feira Franca, a tax-free market that King Henry IV granted in 1467. In the Casto Sampedro gardens beside it stands a fountain financed by Charles V in 1537 and finished fifteen years later, which was used to welcome pilgrims on their way to Santiago; it stood in the square itself until 1857 and was set up in the gardens in 1928. In 1983 the council decided to pave the neighbouring Chocolate Street in granite, and the work, opened in August 1984, took road traffic off it.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This market square is mentioned as Praza da Feira in 1330, and growers from the surrounding villages sold vegetables, fruit and chestnuts here every morning until the 1990s. The house on its south side was the town slaughterhouse from 1595, and in 1888 it became the Factory of Light, which made Pontevedra the first city in Galicia and the second in Spain with electricity and public lighting. Today it is the Casa da Luz.
Photo: Jmblanco74 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The writer Ramón María del Valle-Inclán began his secondary studies in Pontevedra in 1877 and published his first book of stories, Femeninas, here in 1895. This bronze by César Lombera, unveiled in 2003, shows him as a life-size dandy with hat, cane, glasses and long beard, posed as if leaving the house of the Muruáis brothers, whose library was among the best in the city.
Photo: LBM1948 — CC BY-SA 4.0 This small neo-Gothic chapel was built in 1898 because the neighbours asked for one. It stands on part of the site of the old hospital, which ran from the 15th century and was demolished in 1896 together with its cemetery, church and an altar for the souls in purgatory. Inside, a polychrome wooden altarpiece shows six figures amid flames.
Photo: Gerardo nuñez — CC BY 3.0 This is described as the most harmoniously proportioned medieval square in the city, ringed by the pazos of noble families. It has carried its name since 1843, after Teucer, the mythical founder of Pontevedra: the story goes that the archer, son of King Telamon of Salamis, followed a mermaid called Leucoiña into exile in the ría and founded the city. A 16th-century pazo on the north side carries the city's most imposing coat of arms, a baroque stone shield dated 1716.
Photo: Domi402 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The convent of San Domingos here was founded around 1282, but work on the church that survives began only in 1383 and ran through the 15th century. What remains is the main apse, formed of five apses and exceptional in Galician Gothic, along with part of the south wall and the entrance to the chapter house. Attempts to demolish the ruins in 1880 and 1886 were stopped, and in 1895 they were declared a National Monument; they are now the oldest building of the Pontevedra Museum.
Photo: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Guild of Seamen, the oldest civil body in Pontevedra and the oldest sea guild in Spain, played a key part in paying for this basilica, partly with baskets of fish from its catches. The west front is built like a stone altarpiece in the Plateresque style and dated 1541. Look on either side of the rose window for the busts said to be Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés, and at the lower right for Saint Jerome wearing reading glasses, an anachronism, since spectacles were not invented until centuries after his death.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 This baroque stone cross is dated 1773 on its base and is also called the cross of Adam and Eve, for the scene of original sin carved low on its shaft, with Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Michael higher up. It was first raised as a cross of souls in Estribela, in Lourizán, where it stood for almost two centuries before it was restored and set up in this square. It faces the house where Valle-Inclán lived.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 For a long time this was the only crossing of the Lérez on the Portuguese Way. Local tradition gives it a Roman past, and the main sign of an earlier crossing is a milestone of the emperor Hadrian, dated 134 A.D., found in 1988. Its low granite arches carry stone pilgrim shells between them, added in the 1950s, and the bridge was fully pedestrianized in work that ended in 2020, with new granite paving.
Photo: LBM1948 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Pedro Antonio Ferreiro, a master stonemason, built this baroque pazo for José Manuel Valladares y Figueroa, Count of Fefiñáns, completing the work in 1771, apart from the gable with the coat of arms, and finishing it in 1773. The square in front is called Pedreira, or stone quarry, because of the stone piled up here to build the pazo, the Church of San Bartolomeu and the Jesuit college. Today the pazo houses the regulatory council of the Rías Baixas wine denomination, and every year a guest speaks from its balcony to open the August festivities of the Pilgrim Virgin.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 The Jesuits built this church between 1695 and 1714 on plans modelled on the Church of the Gesù in Rome, for the college they ran in the city from 1650 until they were expelled from Spain in 1767. It is one of the few examples of Italian Baroque in Galicia, with six large Doric columns and bell towers on its front. It became the parish church in 1836, taking the name of the older church of San Bartolomeu that it replaced.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 Firewood Square is named for the wood and pine cones sold here to fuel the town's ovens and hearths. The market ran every day, and Monday was the big day, when carts of oak arrived that the bakers prized for their ovens. A 15th-century granite calvary stands in the middle, placed here around 1941 at the request of Castelao, and the square returned to pedestrian use on 7 April 1990.
Photo: Domi402 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The provincial council founded the museum on 30 December 1927, and it opened to the public on 10 August 1929 in this pazo, built in 1760 by José de Castro y Monteagudo, the first auditor of the province. It now spans several historic buildings and a modern one, among them the neighbouring Pazo de García Flórez, the former Jesuit college and the Gothic ruins of San Domingos. Casto Sampedro was its first director.
Photo: Jl FilpoC — CC BY-SA 4.0 The house takes its name from four Renaissance busts on its upper facade, whose meaning is uncertain; the most accepted theory is that they show the Barbeito and Padrón family who built it at the end of the 16th century, and one of them wears glasses. For a long time it was a post house, where horses were tied to the facade while travellers rested. From 1880 to 1908 it was the home and laboratory of the photographer Francisco Zagala, one of the first chroniclers of the city.
Photo: juantiagues — CC BY-SA 2.0 This chapel stands on the Portuguese Way, and its floor plan is inspired by a scallop shell, the pilgrim's emblem, with a cross inscribed in it. The first stone was laid on 18 June 1778, and after sixteen years of work the first mass was held in 1794. At the entrance, the holy-water font is a large tridacna shell that Admiral Casto Méndez Núñez brought back from the Pacific.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0
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