Village
Zas is a farming and livestock-raising municipality of about 4,300 inhabitants in the province of La Coruña, in the comarca of Tierra de Soneira; it has no coastline but lies right at the heart of the Costa da Morte. It preserves a notable set of megalithic remains, with tombs some 5,000 years old among which the Arca de Piosa, in the parish of Muiño, stands out, as well as several castros and the medieval bridge of Brandomil, built on Roman foundations. It also preserves the Torres do Allo, a 16th-century Gothic-Renaissance pazo, and holds the Festa da Carballeira, a folk music festival that is one of the leading fixtures on the traditional Galician circuit.
Monument
A Gothic-Renaissance pazo in the parish do Allo, in Zas (A Coruña), built between the late 15th century and the first half of the 16th by the hidalgo Gomes de Rioboo Vilardefrancos on a family property where a medieval fortress destroyed by the Catholic Monarchs had previously stood; its architect, unknown, was the same one who designed the façade of the Hospital Real de Santiago. At first only the right-hand tower was raised; the main body was built later, and the second tower was added by Gomes de Rioboo Seixas Vilardefrancos between 1669 and 1689. It is one of the oldest pazos in Galicia. In the 19th century the naturalist Víctor López Seoane lived there. Sold by the López-Rioboo family to the Diputación de A Coruña in 1998, it is Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) — the declaration is dated 17 October 1994 and also 1999 — and has been a museum since 2005.
Monument
A Romanesque church in the parish of Gándara, the oldest of the twenty-one that make up the municipality; its granite fabric preserves the sober volume typical of the rural Romanesque of the Costa da Morte.
Monument
A church dated 1540 in the municipal capital, a work of transition between late Gothic and the Renaissance which presides over the town from which the twenty-one parishes of the district are administered.
Monument
A church that combines a Renaissance apse with a Baroque nave, a sign of the successive alterations that the rural churches of Terra de Soneira accumulated between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Nature
A 566-metre summit, the highest point of a concello which, despite lying in the very heart of the Costa da Morte, has no coastline at all; from it one can see the Xallas river's passage southward. It rises between the parishes of Gándara and Carreira, in the range known as the Serra de Santiago, which stretches from Corcoesto to Brandomil and owes its relief to a fault that shaped the Soneira valley. From its summit the whole coast between Fisterra and Arteixo can be seen, and several mámoas have been found nearby, most of them already in ruins.
Nature
The stretch of the River Xallas as it passes through the municipality's southern parishes, with riverside woodland and the historic crossing used by the Roman road; downstream the river will end up plunging into the sea at O Ézaro.
Nature
An oak wood that acts as a natural amphitheatre for the oldest folk festival in the comarca; its centuries-old oaks form one of the last native woods in a territory now dominated by eucalyptus and pine.
Monument
A living museum that reproduces the whole process of flax, from growing to weaving, with a two-hundred-year-old loom among its pieces; it has been kept up since 1993 by the Amigos do Lino association, dedicated to reviving the craft.
Nature
A pre-Roman fortified settlement preserved in the parish of the same name, evidence of the hillfort settlement of an interior that so far has yielded very few excavated sites in Terra de Soneira.
Activity
Folk music festival organised since 1984 by the cultural association Castro-Meda on the second weekend of August in an oak wood that acts as a natural amphitheatre; with more than three decades of editions, it is declared a festival of tourist interest and gathers thousands of attendees each summer among the oaks.
Monument
A Arca da Piosa is a dolmen about five thousand years old located right on the boundary between the parishes of Muíño (Zas) and Baíñas (Vimianzo), with a polygonal chamber 3.20 metres wide formed by four orthostats and a cover, and a short one-metre passage facing east, closed by a laxe split into three pieces and covered in turn by another, larger slab; the total length of the monument is 8 metres, with large slabs, especially those covering it, and a very visible mámoa. It was studied in 1933 by the German archaeologist Georg Leisner and is well preserved; it lies close to other dolmens in the area, such as the Pedra Moura de Monte Carneo, the Pedra da Lebre and the Pedra Cuberta. It was declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2011.
Monument
Granite ashlar bridge over the river Xallas, in the parish of Brandomil, of Roman origin -a crossroads of paths towards the Fisterra coast, where the Per Loca Marítima road once passed- although nothing survives today of that construction; the present bridge was raised over the Roman one around the 11th or 12th centuries and was slightly reinforced in the 18th. It has four semicircular arches, three of them 8.20 metres wide, with triangular cutwaters upstream and trapezoidal ones downstream, and it retains its parapets and a stretch of roadway in good condition. The central arch collapsed in 1989 after a severe flood. Next to the bridge there was once a castro and later a Roman settlement drawn by the tin mines of Limideiro. It was a crossing point on the road that linked the interior with the coast and is the oldest civil monument in the concello.
Monument
An eighteenth-century pazo restored in recent years, notable for its extensive gallery. It forms part of the so-called route of the pazos of the concello along with those of Romelle and Edreiras, a seigneurial ensemble uncommon in a municipality of the interior of the Costa da Morte.
Nature
At 566 metres it is the greatest height of the concello and its natural viewpoint: from the summit the whole valley of Soneira is dominated and, on clear days, a good part of the coast of the Costa da Morte.
Nature
An oak wood of some three hundred centuries-old carballos that serves as a festival ground and a place of local gathering. It is one of the best preserved riverside woods in the surroundings of the town of Baio.
Monument
A centre devoted to the growing and the processing of flax, which was for centuries the textile livelihood of the houses of the valley of Soneira. It shows the complete process, from retting to weaving.
Activity
An approved itinerary that follows the watercourses of the concello among waterfalls, mills and riverside woodland. It is complemented by the PR-G 270, likewise laid out beside the rivers of the valley of Soneira.
Historical milestone
A strong flood of the Xallas brought down the central arch of the thousand-year-old bridge in December 1989. The building of a modern crossing alongside it later made it possible to restore it and reserve it for pedestrian traffic.
Historical milestone
The pazo of the Torres do Allo, in the parish of Allo, in the concello of Zas (A Coruña), is a civil building of the 16th century in Gothic-Renaissance style and one of the oldest pazos in Galicia. The fidalgo Gomes de Rioboo Vilardefrancos had it built in the first half of that century on lands belonging to his family, where there had previously stood a medieval fortress demolished by the Catholic Monarchs; its architect, never identified, worked in the manner of Enrique de Egas, the author of the façade of the Hospital Real in Santiago. The right-hand tower was raised first; the main body and the second tower, between 1669 and 1689, were added later, along with hórreos, mills and outbuildings. Today it belongs to the Diputación de A Coruña and houses a museum open to visitors on life in the pazos.
Food and drink
In Santa Margarida, San Roque do Monte and San Pedro do Allo the country picnics beside springs considered miraculous are kept up, a custom that in some cases goes back more than four hundred years.