Village
Culleredo is a municipality of about 31,000 inhabitants in the province of A Coruña, part of its metropolitan area, at the southern end of the ria do Burgo, where the river Mero flows in after gathering the waters of the Valiñas. Until 1864 the municipality was called Alvedro, a name still kept today by A Coruña airport, located within its district. The terrain combines the ria itself with a southern mountain range that includes Monte do Castro and the montes do Xalo, and the oceanic climate has recorded, at the airport's observatory, extremes of up to 37.7 degrees in summer and -4.8 in winter. Culleredo preserves the Ponte do Burgo, of medieval origin, the chapel of San Cosme de Sésamo and a museum devoted to tide mills.
Monument
A bridge of eleven round arches over the mouth of the Mero, late medieval in origin and linked to the patronage of Fernán Pérez de Andrade; today it is a footbridge and an unavoidable stretch of the Camiño Inglés.
Activity
The Camiño Inglés is the pilgrim route used by pilgrims who arrived by sea from the British Isles and other northern European ports, disembarking at A Coruña or Ferrol to head for Santiago de Compostela. The A Coruña branch, under 100 kilometres long and divided into three stages, sets out from the city of A Coruña and crosses the municipality of Culleredo along the do Burgo seafront promenade, passing the Acea de Ama mills, the Alvedro castro and the Valiñas river, before continuing towards Carral, Cambre and Abegondo on the way to Compostela. Although its length is shorter than usually required, since December 2016 the Compostela cathedral chapter has granted the Compostela certificate to those who complete it.
Monument
Church of the 11th century next to the bridge of O Burgo, on the shore of the Mero estuary; it belonged to the settlement called Burgo de Faro, which preceded A Coruña as head of the comarca before its repopulation.
Monument
A medieval tower linked to the house of Andrade, in the parish of Celas (Culleredo, A Coruña); it is the best-preserved piece of military architecture in the municipality, along with the pazo of Vilaboa and the hermitage of San Cosme de Sésamo. It is all that remains of the old fortress of Vinseira, already documented in 1395, when it belonged to the house of Andrade, whose coat of arms it still bears; it was destroyed in the Irmandiña War and rebuilt shortly afterwards. Square in plan, it measures eight metres on each side and twelve in height, and had a pazo attached to it that has since disappeared. Declared a bien de interés cultural (heritage site) in 1994, it was restored in 1992 and between that year and 2011 housed the Culleredo Ethnographic Museum; the neighbouring Romanesque church of Santa María de Celas is believed to have formed part of the original fortification.
Nature
Monte Xalo is a mountain chain that separates the Mero and Anllóns basins and stretches for three kilometres between Carral and Laracha, on the boundary between Culleredo and Cerceda; its highest point is 514 metres, one of the highest points on the A Coruña coast. Its slopes of heathland and rocky outcrops, protected for their natural value, are shared between Culleredo, Carral and the neighbouring municipalities, and conceal burial mounds found in 1950 by the archaeologist Luis Monteagudo, now partly gone. From O Petón, an outcrop at the top set up for climbing, one commands the whole district: the Sabón power station, the outer harbour, Alvedro airport and the Tower of Hercules. A project to install Galicia's largest wind farm here was ruled out by Aena on grounds of airport safety.
Curiosity
A group of tide mills on the ría del Burgo, restored as a museum; they harnessed the ebb and flow of the salt water to grind grain and were linked to the operations of the monastery of Sobrado. The place name Acea de Ama refers to an acea, from the Arabic as-saniya, a waterwheel or mill, while Ama comes from a pre-Roman root related to a water channel, as are, in this case, the Mero river or the ría del Burgo itself. The place gives its name to a settlement in the parish of Rutis, in the municipality of Culleredo, within the A Coruña region.
Activity
The Xardín Botánico Ría do Burgo, covering around 50,000 m², opens onto the seafront promenade of O Burgo, in Culleredo, on the bank of the Mero estuary, and brings together a great variety of native Atlantic flora species along with a garden in the style of the Galician pazos and small traditional gardens from other parts of the world. It also has a greenhouse, a children's playground and a small lagoon that fills as the tide rises, since it is connected to the ría. Inside, the Aula de la Naturaleza Juan Lembeye hosts exhibitions, concerts and courses on environmental themes. It is reached from the seafront promenade linking O Burgo with the medieval bridge.