Village
Pol is a municipality in the province of Lugo, in Galicia, extending over the foothills of the sierra de Meira, with its capital at Mosteiro since 1970 and a population of about 1,550 inhabitants spread across seventeen parishes. Its place name comes from the Latin villa Pauli. The territory preserves prehistoric mámoas and castros, and through Valonga ran the Roman road that, coming from Astúrica Augusta, forked towards Ribadeo and Vivero; from that period survives a votive altar dedicated to the lares viales, now in the museum of the castro of Villadonga. In the Middle Ages there were monasteries at Arcos, Mosteiro and Silva, which disappeared when the Cistercian Order settled at the nearby monastery of Santa María de Meira. The local church preserves a Romanesque doorway beneath later Baroque alterations.
Monument
A Roman villa in the parish of Silva that preserves a notable mosaic, the most eloquent testimony to the Romanisation of these lands crossed by the road that came from Astúrica Augusta.
Nature
Fortified settlement that gives the place its name and heads the list of castros of this Lugo concello, among which figure several enclosures known simply as Os Castros, spread across different parishes of Pol.
Monument
Parish church of Arcos, one of the three places in the concello where there was a monastery in medieval times, along with Mosteiro and Silva; the place name itself preserves the memory of that vanished religious life.
Monument
The parish church of San Salvador de Mosteiro gives its name to this parish of the concello of Pol, whose place name recalls the medieval cenobium that once existed there. In its praza de Galicia stand two commemorative sculptures: one dedicated to the emigrant, erected on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Festa ó Emigrante, and another in homage to the hunters of Pol.
Nature
An alignment that closes off the concello to the southeast, facing the Serra de Meira which bounds it to the northeast; between the two opens the farming depression through which the rivers Azúmara and Lea run.
Nature
It rises at almost 1,000 metres of altitude in the parish of Montecubeiro, on the foothills of the Pradairo and Pena Grande mountains, in the municipality of Castroverde, and then moves into that of Pol, where it is one of the concello's three main rivers: a tributary of the Miño basin, it crosses the flat lands of western Pol between hay meadows and riverside woodland, in one of the most productive livestock-farming areas of inland Lugo. After also passing through the municipality of Castro de Rei, and with a basin of around 200 km², it pours its waters into the Miño, at the place of Coea, after a course of 25 kilometres. It is a river of oceanic pluvial regime, with an average flow of 0.4 m³/s and an average rainfall over its basin of 1,122 mm a year.
Nature
The Lea river rises near the place of Laga, in the south of the municipality of Pol (Lugo), to which it gives its name by crossing its parish of Lea, and after running through it passes into the municipality of Castro de Rey, where it flows into the Miño, in the hamlet of Beloi, after a course of 23.5 kilometres. It is a lowland river, of oceanic pluvial regime, which can overflow in extraordinary rains; its main tributaries are the río de Guimarás and the rego dos Corvos. Its name may go back to a Germanic personal name, unrelated to the river of the same name in the Basque Country. Its open valley, with deep soils, explains the density of hamlets and dairy farms that characterises this Lugo concello.
Nature
Unlike its neighbours, the Lúa drains towards the Cantabrian side, so that the concello is divided between two great basins; its headwaters open in the foothills of the Serra de Meira.
Curiosity
The mosaic preserved in the Roman villa of Doncide, in the parish of Silva, is one of the few mosaic pavements documented in the interior of Lugo and proves the standard of living of its owners.
Curiosity
The road linking Astúrica Augusta with the northwest of the peninsula passed through the concello; the materials recovered along its course are kept in the Provincial Museum of Lugo and explain the density of Roman sites in the area.
Activity
A celebration that gathers each year the residents who left and their descendants; in the square of Mosteiro two sculptures were raised, dedicated to the emigrant and the hunter, the two figures the concello wished to commemorate.
Monument
The parish church of one of the nineteen parishes of the concello, with a rubble masonry fabric, a straight apse and additions of the modern period over a medieval construction of which remains are left in the walls.
Monument
A parish church surrounded by its atrium and its cemetery, characteristic of the dispersed settlement of the foothills of the sierra of Meira, with a two-opening bellcote and a roof of slate slabs.
Monument
A seigneurial house in the place of Pousadela that bears a coat of arms over the main door, testimony to the small rural gentry that controlled these lands between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Monument
A rural pazo of L-shaped plan with a corridor and closed courtyard, one of the several gentry houses that punctuate the concello along with the Casa do Avogado and the Casa Grande de Enriba, all linked to local lineages.
Nature
A sierra which, together with that of Meira, frames the concello of Pol, situated at an average altitude of about 505 metres, and also forms a border with Castroverde and Baleira, from where a panoramic view of the three municipalities can be seen. Also known as the serra do Miradoiro, it reaches its highest point at Mount Pradairo, at 1,034 metres, where, besides the geodetic marker, a hut once used for fire watching is preserved; on clear days much of the Terra Cha and the sierras of La Coruña, Orense and Asturias can be seen. From its slopes streams rise that flow both to the Miño basin and to the Cantabrian side, among them the river Eo itself and its tributary the río Martín.
Curiosity
A hamlet catalogued as a singular ensemble for the coherence of its popular architecture: stone dwellings, stables, hórreos and fountains that form a compact settlement among hay meadows.
Curiosity
The concello has yielded a votive altar dedicated to domestic divinities and tesserae and fragments of mosaic from a villa, proof that Romanisation reached these inland valleys of the north of Lugo.
Historical milestone
The monastery of Silva, one of the three medieval monasteries documented in the concello along with those of Arcos and Mosteiro, obtains between 1154 and 1159 the papal protection that guaranteed its properties against the local nobility.
Food and drink
A specialised fair held around the feast of the patron saint of ploughmen that brings together agricultural machinery, livestock and food stalls with produce from the holdings of the concello.