Village
Castro de Rei is a municipality of around 5,000 inhabitants in the heart of the Terra Chá comarca, whose capital has been designated a Conjunto Histórico-Artístico (a former top-tier Spanish heritage protection category, now succeeded by the BIC) and a picturesque village since 1971; its historic centre, built on a rise that was first a hillfort (castro) and later a fortress, preserves part of the walls and the remains of the castle dwelling, since the tower collapsed in 1941. The municipality contains hillforts, megaliths and protected landscapes with lagoons and rivers, including the Miño, as well as pazos (manor houses) and vernacular architecture. Its main attraction is the Castro de Viladonga, a fortified Iron Age settlement that has been excavated and has had its own monographic museum since 1983, now updated with interactive activities.
Nature
A fortified settlement of some four hectares at 550 metres, occupied between the 2nd and 5th centuries and protected by several rings of slate walls standing up to fourteen metres above the ditch; it has been a listed cultural heritage asset since 2009.
Monument
Created in 1983 next to the archaeological site, this monographic museum displays ceramics, coins and metal objects recovered during the excavation campaigns led by Manuel Chamoso Lamas and Felipe Arias, and explains the life of the castro in Roman times. The building, the work of the A Coruña architect Carlos Fernández-Gago, began to be built in 1975 at the request of Chamoso Lamas himself, with funds from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and the Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, and was completed in 1977. It was officially established by ministerial order on 10 May 1983, and opened on 29 November 1986. In 1989 its management passed to the Consellería de Cultura de la Xunta, which between 1991 and 1994 expanded and renovated the building according to a design by José Luis Arias Jordán.
Monument
Of the castle that gave the town its name, what survives above all is the keep, built in the second half of the 16th century; it dominates the upper quarter, declared a historic-artistic site in 1971 and looking out over the Terra Chá plain.
Monument
A Roman villa located in 2020 in the parish of Coea, one of the most significant recent archaeological finds in the Terra Chá; it documents the farming of the Lugo plain during the Roman occupation.
Nature
The Miño crosses the municipality of Castro de Rei (Terra Chá, Lugo), receiving here the waters of three secondary tributaries, the Azúmara, the Lea and the Anllo, before continuing its course toward Lugo; the stretch is included within the Terras do Miño Biosphere Reserve. Alongside the river unfolds a mosaic landscape of great ecological richness: meadows, farmland, riverside forests, brañas, heathland and rush marshes, a souto of chestnut trees and carballeiras, over the hay meadows typical of the chairega plain.
Monument
Seigneurial tower declared a bien de interés cultural in the municipal district of Castro de Rei, one of the concellos with the greatest density of fortified architecture in the Terra Chá, together with the town's castle.
Nature
A watercourse that crosses the municipality of Castro de Rei and gives its name to the parish of Ribeiras de Lea; together with the Azúmara and the Anllo it drains the plain towards the Miño through hay meadows. A left-bank tributary of the Miño, it rises near the place of Laga, in the south of the municipality of Pol —taking its name from that municipality's parish of Lea—, and after crossing Castro de Rei flows into the Miño at the hamlet of Beloi, with a course of 23.5 kilometres. It is a lowland river, of oceanic pluvial regime with an average rainfall of about 1,000 millimetres a year, which can overflow during episodes of exceptional rain; among its tributaries the río de Guimarás and the regato dos Corvos stand out.
Curiosity
Roman settlement of the parish of Ansemar which, together with the villa that appeared in Coea, shows that the agricultural exploitation of the chairega plain began as early as imperial times.
Curiosity
Group of prehistoric tumuli of the parish of Santa Locaia; the concello also brings together megaliths in Duancos, Loentia, Ansemar and Ribeiras de Lea, spread over the heights of the plain.
Activity
Signposted itinerary in the concello of Castro de Rei that spreads poems by authors of the comarca through the landscape, in a land that gave Galician letters names such as Manuel María or Díaz Castro.
Historical milestone
The excavations brought to light in 2020 a Roman villa in the parish of Coea, a find that forced a revision of the degree of Romanization of a comarca known above all for its castros (fortified hilltop settlements).
Food and drink
The plain of the Terra Chá is one of the areas covered by the Pataca de Galicia protected geographical indication; its deep, damp soil yields tubers of firm flesh and fine skin.