Village
Pantón is a municipality of about 2,350 inhabitants in the comarca of Tierra de Lemos, in the province of Lugo, whose capital is the town of Ferreira de Pantón. It stretches between the canyons of the Miño and Sil rivers, which form the Los Peares reservoir and serve as a natural boundary with the province of Ourense, in a setting typical of the Ribeira Sacra in Lugo; its highest point is Mount Pena Pombeira, at 703 meters, near the Sil canyon. It has vineyards under the Ribeira Sacra denomination of origin and notable Romanesque religious architecture, among which the monastery of Santa María de Ferreira and the church of San Miguel de Eiré stand out. Fog is frequent in the riverside area, with rainfall of about 1,055 millimeters a year.
Monument
Documented as early as 1108 with the abbess Ximena and refounded in 1175 by countess Fronilda Fernández under Cistercian rule; declared a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931) in 1975, it is the only Galician monastery inhabited without a break since its origin.
Monument
It appears at the end of the 11th century as Polumbeiro in a list of Cluniac houses, and in 1108 the infanta Urraca handed it over to the Benedictines; its Romanesque church, with three naves ending in three semicircular apses, is of the 12th and 13th centuries.
Monument
Remains of a 12th-century Benedictine monastic complex declared a Monumento Nacional (former Spanish heritage-protection designation) in 1964; above the crossing rises a rectangular tower spanning the full width of the nave, a unique solution in Galician Romanesque architecture. Tradition tells that the nuns who lived there abandoned it after an invasion of ants and withdrew to the nearby hamlet of Pedragude, from where they would watch their church from the crag known as A Pena da Monxa. Inside, the semicircular apse is decorated with paired columns whose capitals bear serpent heads; the chancel is reached through a triple triumphal arch that retains 16th-century wall paintings, and the north doorway displays an Agnus Dei between jambs carved with leaves ending in human heads.
Monument
The Torre de Marce is a medieval fortification located at the place of Marce, in the parish of Vilar de Ortelle, municipality of Pantón (Terra de Lemos, Lugo). Its origins date back to the 9th century. It is recorded in 1158 as Castelo do Miño and in 1164 in a royal confirmation by Ferdinand II; by 1480 it belonged to Lopo Alfonso de Marceo. Local tradition recalls that it belonged to the Count of Lemos and that its shadow reached as far as the church of Chouzán, on the other side of the Miño. Of the old stronghold, a square tower survives, 7.5 metres on each side and up to 7 metres high, built of rough granite with walls 120 centimetres thick, today surrounded by more recent buildings.
Nature
Thermal springs in the municipality whose use is documented as far back as Roman times; the place name, repeated all over Galicia, betrays the continuity of water worship from antiquity through to Christian devotion.
Monument
A former monastery on the bank of the Miño, one of the three monasteries of the concello together with Ferreira de Pantón and San Vicenzo de Pombeiro; its church preserves Romanesque elements over a much earlier settlement.
Monument
A manor tower built in the first half of the 15th century by the Duke of Arjona, Fadrique Enríquez, at a crossing point of the Camino Real between Los Peares and Monforte de Lemos, on the lands of Pantón; together with the one at Marce, it forms the pair of fortifications that controlled the routes into the Sil canyon. Its exact location is a matter of dispute: some sources place it in the hamlet of Cotillón, in the parish of Acedre, based on a document from 1591, while research by the Segredos de Pantón association identifies it with the Torre de Villamirón, in the parish of Pombeiro. A local legend explains the name as the place where a queen, having searched for her missing son, found him and had the tower built to relieve her of her sorrows.
Nature
A waterfall of some forty metres of drop set in the municipal district of Pantón, on the slope that descends towards the Miño; the access path passes beside a castro and through riverside woods of the Ribeira Sacra.
Nature
A terraced slope that descends to the channel of the Miño between the parishes of Ribeiras de Miño and Pombeiro, with vineyard on terraces, chestnut groves and the monasteries looking out over the water.
Curiosity
Rock carvings on the monte San Román, in the parish of Acedre; they form part of the seventeen rock art groups catalogued in Pantón, spread also across Pesqueiras, Vilaxilde and Cancelada.
Curiosity
A place of worship cut into the rock in the municipal district of Pantón, testimony to the early medieval eremitism that peopled the canyons of the Miño and the Sil before the founding of the great monasteries.
Food and drink
A show that brings together each spring the wineries of the designation of origin in Pantón, with popular tastings and a festa da empanada at which empanadas and produce from the concello's hamlets are sold.