Village
Vimianzo is a concello in the interior of the Costa da Morte, in the province of A Coruña, with about 6,800 inhabitants. Its territory holds one of the largest concentrations of dolmens and burial mounds in Galicia, among them the Pedra Cuberta, where Georg Leisner located the earliest cave paintings of a dolmen in the north-west of the peninsula. It preserves the castro of As Barreiras, with walls over eight metres high that 2010 excavations dated to the 1st or 2nd century BC, and Roman agricultural villas such as that of Tines, with a necropolis, as well as the funerary stele of Victorinus. The municipality is dominated by a 12th- and 13th-century castle, also called Torres de Martelo, which passed from the Traba family to the Moscoso de Altamira family.
Monument
A fortress built between the late 12th and early 13th centuries by the Mariño de Lobeira family and later a seat of the Moscoso family, of irregular polygonal plan with three rectangular towers around the parade ground and a crenellated keep; above the entrance gateway shines the Moscoso coat of arms with a wolf's head. Here Pedro Madruga held the bishop of Tui prisoner, who paid seven hundred thousand reales in ransom, and in 1465 the archbishop Alonso II de Fonseca spent two years imprisoned in a cage on the orders of Bernal Sánchez de Moscoso. It was torn down by the irmandiños in 1467 and later rebuilt; it preserves sections of wall from the 13th to the 15th centuries. It has belonged to the Diputación de A Coruña since 1973, houses an exhibition of folk crafts, and has been Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 17 October 1994.
Monument
A 12th-century Romanesque church whose south tympanum shows the Traslatio, the arrival of the Apostle's body in Galicia in a stone boat with seven disciples; it is considered the oldest depiction of that scene in peninsular Romanesque.
Monument
A stone cross in the parish of Bamiro dated between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th, cited among the oldest cruceiros preserved in Galicia; it marks a crossroads in the interior of Terra de Soneira.
Monument
A dolmen in the parish of Berdoias, one of eight megalithic monuments catalogued in Vimianzo and evidence of the very dense Neolithic settlement of the inland areas of the Costa da Morte. Also known as Casota dos Mouros, it is thought to have been built between 2500 and 2000 BC; it has a rectangular plan formed by three vertical slabs and a monolithic capstone, and preserves inside carvings of cup marks and crosses, the latter probably added to Christianise a pagan site. Lacking the usual structure with passage and mound, it belongs among the late constructions of Galician megalithism, already close to the cists of the Bronze Age. Well preserved, it served for years as a shelter for the shepherds of Berdoias.
Monument
An 18th-century sanctuary built on top of a hill in the parish of Bamiro, among granite rock formations; its pilgrimage festival brings together people from all over Terra de Soneira every year.
Monument
A hermitage founded in 1681 at 407 metres above sea level in the parish of Salto, one of the highest churches in the municipality; from its esplanade much of the valley of the Río do Porto is in view.
Monument
A chapel of very simple design, with a single nave and a rectangular presbytery, built beside the Río do Porto; it typifies the lesser religious architecture scattered through the municipality's fourteen parishes.
Monument
A 17th-century stone cross put up by don Sancho de Lema in the parish of Cambeda, next to the hermitage of Santa Mariña de Paizás, founded at the beginning of that same century; it is one of the municipality's three catalogued historic cruceiros.
Nature
A range peaking at 515 metres in the parish of Baíñas, the highest point of a municipality of 188 square kilometres and the divide between the basins of the Río do Porto and the River Xallas.
Nature
Granite outcrops crowning the Bamiro hill next to the sanctuary of Montetorán, moulded by erosion into fanciful silhouettes similar to those of the nearby Penedos de Pasarela e Traba.
Nature
A Galician river of the Atlantic slope that rises in the sierra del Bico de Meda, in the municipality of Santa Comba, and runs about 40 kilometres through the municipalities of Santa Comba, Zas, Vimianzo and Camariñas, harnessed by the Foxo, Gaioso and Carantoña hydroelectric plants before flowing into the Ría de Camariñas; its valley marks the northern edge of the Terra de Soneira. Locally it takes different names depending on the places it passes through, though the name río do Porto, documented since 1764, is the one that became established in Galician cartography in the 19th and 20th centuries; it was also called río da Ponte, and in Antiquity, Vir fluvius. It receives tributaries such as the río do Sisto and that of Zas, and preserves the batáns do Mosquetín and historic bridges such as that of Baio.
Nature
Artificial reservoir created in 1966 on the Xallas river, between the concellos of Dumbría, Mazaricos, Vimianzo and Zas, with a capacity of 103 cubic hectometres over 1,250 hectares; its dam, 27 metres high and 127 metres long, separates Vimianzo from the neighbouring concello of Mazaricos. It was built to supply a hydroelectric plant, today operated by Ferroatlántica, and by flooding the valley it slightly altered the area's climate, bringing more humidity and frequent fog banks. Under its waters lay the dolmen da Gándara de Baíñas, visible only when the water level drops a great deal. In 2007 its draining to maximise electricity production caused an ecological disaster that killed thousands of fish, fined more than 300,000 euros.
Nature
A valley that houses a nature classroom devoted to environmental education, at the foot of the Montes do Cabral; it combines riverside woodland, hay meadows and the greatest altitudes in the district.
Curiosity
In 1465 Bernal Sánchez de Moscoso shut the archbishop of Compostela, Alonso de Fonseca II, up in the castle of Vimianzo, where he spent two years a prisoner in a cage that popular legend chose to make of gold.
Activity
A show in which craftspeople work in full view of the public inside the castle grounds, owned by the provincial council since 1973, which also houses the Costa da Morte interpretation centre.
Activity
A historical re-enactment of the taking of the fortress by the irmandiños in 1467, when the peasant rising against the feudal lords pulled down walls that are now stormed again every summer.
Monument
The pazo das Torres de Cereixo, in the town of Cereixo (Vimianzo, Costa da Morte), is a stately fortified house overlooking the ria of Camariñas and declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). Its two 16th-century towers flank the body of the building, whose door bears a large coat of arms with the blazons of the Montenegro, Bermúdez, Castro de Lemos, Soutomaior, Mendoza, Figueroa and Andrade families. A centuries-old oak grows beside the towers, and the whole complex, privately owned, was put up for sale in 2011 for 4.5 million euros. Next to the Romanesque church of Santiago de Cereixo, the two buildings form one of the most complete monumental ensembles in the interior of the Costa da Morte.
Nature
Megalithic tomb in the parish of Treos, in Vimianzo, with an entrance passage 6.6 metres long and almost two metres high, which is missing the chamber's covering slab. On its orthostats is preserved a painting in red and black on a white background, with geometric motifs, wavy lines, concentric circles and triangles arranged in three horizontal bands, as in the Dombate dolmen, covering the entire monument, passage and chamber. The German archaeologist Georg Leisner made this decoration known in 1934, although in 1997 the deterioration of the images was denounced due to the administrations' lack of interest. It was declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in April 2011 and is one of the best-preserved dolmens in a concello that also contains the Casota de Freáns and the Arca da Piosa.
Nature
An elevation of some four hundred metres that dominates the valley of Soneira and the mouth of the river do Porto. It is one of the widest natural balconies of a concello without open coast.
Curiosity
A mill that made use of the ebb and flow of the ría of Camariñas to turn its stones, a very rare typology in Galicia. It is preserved beside the Romanesque and seigneurial ensemble of Cereixo.
Curiosity
An eighteenth-century sanctuary raised on a height of the parish of Bamiro, to which popular devotion attributes curative virtues. Its pilgrimage festival brings together people from all over the valley of Soneira.
Activity
A little frequented balcony above the valley and the ría, reached by tracks and paths from the parishes of the north of the concello. It is one of the least known panoramic points of the whole Costa da Morte.
Historical milestone
The irmandiña revolt besieged and pulled down the Moscoso fortress in 1467. During those years archbishop Alonso II de Fonseca was held prisoner in it inside a cage, one of the most cited episodes of the conflict.
Historical milestone
The king seized the fortress, raised towards the end of the twelfth century by the Mariño de Lobeira family. From about 1425 it passed into the hands of the Moscoso family, who made it the head of their jurisdiction.
Activity
Held in the parish of Carnés, it is considered one of the oldest gastronomic festivals in Galicia and revolves around a traditional tripe stew. It holds the declaration of festival of tourist interest.