Village
Foz is a seafaring town of around 10,300 inhabitants at the mouth of the Masma river, which forms the Ría de Foz and gives the town its name, from the Latin fauces. Its founding dates back to pre-Roman times, as shown by the hillforts of Fazouro and Pena do Altar; in the 9th century it experienced great growth thanks to the establishment of the episcopal see at San Martiño de Mondoñedo, and in the 16th and 17th centuries it had an important port and one of the three most notable shipyards in Galicia, also engaged in whale hunting. On the outskirts stands the basilica of San Martiño de Mondoñedo, the oldest surviving cathedral in Spain, from the 6th-century Galician pre-Romanesque period, although the present building dates from the 9th to 12th centuries; by the sea stands the Fazouro hillfort.
Monument
The church of the homonymous parish of Foz, in the comarca of Mariña Central, which was an episcopal see from the 9th century: after the Norman invasions, Alfonso III established a new see here with Sabarico as the first bishop, and it was the capital of the Breton lands until 1112. It is considered the oldest cathedral in Spain. The present building is Romanesque from the late 11th century, with buttresses added in the 18th century; a 2008 restoration uncovered the oldest Romanesque frescoes in Galicia, dated to the 12th century. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1931 and a minor basilica since 2007. Beside it flows the A Zapata spring, to which legend attributes miraculous properties. It remains today a parish church and houses the Museo Parroquial de San Martiño de Mondoñedo.
Nature
A hillfort settlement with a pentagonal layout and about 700 square metres, on the punta do Castro, next to the Arealonga beach. Occupied between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, it is the only visitable coastal castro on the Galician Cantabrian coast. Marine erosion has swept away between 25 and 30 metres of land towards the sea, and only the northern part of the enclosure has been excavated, where square-plan dwellings predominate, with paved courtyards, probably belonging to family units, with stone benches attached to the walls and central hearths. Among the finds are pottery with traces of sigillata ware, an omega-shaped annular fibula and a bronze pin, and an antoninianus coin from the mid-3rd century found while cleaning the paving.
Monument
A 16th-century manor house in the parish of Trasmonte, one of the pazos that dot the interior of the municipality along with the Pazo do Lagar and that of the Count of Fontao, evidence of the rural gentry that dominated the Masma valley.
Nature
A Galician natural area listed as a special area of conservation that includes the Masma river from its source in the Sierra do Xistral to its mouth in the Cantabrian Sea, the ría de Foz, and occupies 643.21 hectares across the municipalities of Barreiros, Foz, Lourenzá and Mondoñedo. At the mouth of the ría are notable stands of Spartina maritimus and reed beds of Phragmites australis, along with an endemic species, Cochlearia aestuarica; further inland there are coastal heathlands and peat bogs on calcareous soils. It is a stopover for birds such as the spoonbill and for waders, and a wintering site for ducks, as well as a habitat for Atlantic salmon in the Masma. It was declared a site of Community importance in 2004 and raised to special area of conservation status in 2014.
Nature
An urban beach of fine white sand less than three hundred metres long, next to the mouth of the Masma, with sheltered water and a blue flag. The Laredo promenade starts from it and runs for more than four kilometres of coast.
Nature
One of the municipality's Blue Flag beaches, linked to Rapadoira, Peizás, Pólas and Areoura by the blue trail that threads together the twenty-five kilometres of Foz's coastline and allows much of the shoreline to be walked. It is 760 metres long and about 30 metres wide on average, to the north-west of the town of Foz, and retains a lightly built-up, semi-urban character, with a dune area bordered by the road. Before the tourist boom of the 1970s, its dunes, known as Os Ceás, were used as a burial ground for farm animals that had died of disease, divided up for that purpose among the different parishes; even today bone remains occasionally turn up. In summer it has a lifeguard service and a Red Cross post.
Curiosity
The Romanesque frescoes are preserved in the basilica of San Martiño de Mondoñedo, in the parish of the same name, in the municipality of Foz (Mariña Central, Lugo). The basilica was founded in the 9th century by the bishop of Dume, who had taken refuge in Bretoña in the face of the Muslim threat; after that capital was destroyed by the Normans in the invasions of 966-971, King Alfonso III moved the see to Mondoñedo, which remained the capital of the land of the Britons until 1112. In the restoration works of 2008, beneath successive layers of whitewash applied during the Middle Ages, badly deteriorated 12th-century wall paintings came to light, catalogued as the oldest Romanesque frescoes in Galicia.
Monument
A seventeenth-century seigneurial house in the parish of Cangas, linked to the Almuíña family; it forms part of the group of pazos of Foz together with that of O Lagar, that of Covas and that of the count of Fontao, in Santa Cilla.
Nature
The beach of Arealonga is part of the coast of Foz (Lugo) and flies the blue flag of the European Union, a distinction shared with other notable beaches in the municipality such as Llas, Peizás or Pampillosa. To the east of the sands, on a coastal headland, stands the castro of Fazouro, a fortified settlement dating from the 2nd century BC that gives its name to the focense parish in which the beach lies.
Nature
A beach open to the Cantabrian Sea in the parish of Nois, at the eastern end of the coastline of Foz; its name recalls the German castaways that local tradition places on this cliff-bound shore.
Nature
A castro enclosure in the municipal district of Foz which, together with the better known one at Fazouro, proves the density of fortified settlements on this coastal strip before the arrival of Rome, taking advantage of the heights that command the ría of the Masma.
Activity
A pilgrimage festival held in Foz on the Saturday before Whit Monday, one of the devotional events in the concello's calendar together with the Virxe do Carme of the sailors and the festivities of San Lourenzo.
Historical milestone
The church raised beside the coast of Foz functioned from the 9th century as an episcopal see before the bishopric moved inland; that is why it keeps in local memory the title of the oldest cathedral in Spain.
Food and drink
On the sand flats uncovered by the low tide at the mouth of the Masma, clams and cockles are gathered on foot; that bed supplies the kitchens of the port and coexists with the town's inshore fishing.