Village
Antas de Ulla is a municipality in the geographical centre of Galicia, in Lugo province, on whose territory the Ulla river rises, marking the boundaries with Monterroso and Palas de Rei and giving its name to the Ulloa comarca; until 1916 the municipality was simply called Antas. Its capital, today merged with the municipality's name, was known until the mid-20th century as Seoane. It is divided into twenty-eight parishes with mostly Romanesque churches, and Mount Farelo preserves 54 rock carvings with cup marks, circles, spirals and labyrinths. With around 1,800 inhabitants, it lives from farming and livestock, and is famous for pan de Antas bread, baked in wood-fired ovens, and for its cheeses under the Arzúa-Ulloa designation of origin.
Monument
Fortress raised in the thirteenth century by the counts of Amarante over an old castro, in the parish of Santa Mariña do Castro de Amarante, itself strewn with castros; razed during the Irmandiño revolt of the fifteenth century, it was rebuilt by Roi Fernández de Noguerol, placed there by the Catholic Monarchs, and afterwards passed to the house of Camarasa, articulating the seigneurial power of these lands.
Monument
The residence the Noguerol family added beside the castle in the 17th century, with coats of arms and stone balustrades, turning the old military enclosure into a farming and manorial estate; it is private property and cannot be visited.
Monument
A church raised on a small promontory that more than two thousand years ago was home to a hillfort settlement, from which Castro de Amarante takes its name; of Romanesque origin, it appears today as a 16th- and 17th-century structure with later additions and refurbishments. It gives its name to the parish of Santa Mariña do Castro de Amarante, which became the capital of the municipality of Antas de Ulla and also preserves the pazo of Santa Mariña, the cruceiro of Frádegas and the Frádegas spa. The Festas do Cristo, held on the first Sunday of August, are renowned throughout the comarca.
Monument
An open-air rock art site with fifty-four carvings of four kinds: cup marks, circular combinations, spirals and labyrinths; some of the concentric circles are more than two metres across.
Monument
The parish church of Cervela, one of the seven of Romanesque origin the municipality keeps, evidence of the dense network of medieval churches built in the upper Ulla valley.
Nature
A summit of about 951 metres, the roof of the comarca and a natural viewpoint over the whole of Ulloa, which forms the divide between the Lugo parish of San Martiño de Amarante, in Antas de Ulla, and the Pontevedra parishes of Ventosa and As Trabancas, in Agolada, and for centuries was a compulsory passage between Lugo and Pontevedra; on its slopes rises the Ulla river, which gives its name to the municipality, the comarca and the valley that descends to the ria of Arousa, and its granite ridges hold one of Galicia's rock-art sanctuaries. It was formerly called Monte Sumio; Farelo, a diminutive of Faro referring to another, taller mountain nearby, gave rise to numerous popular sayings about the imminence of rain when its summit becomes covered in clouds.
Nature
A platform laid out on the summit, reached by a dirt track, from which on clear days points in all four Galician provinces can be made out, an uncommon panorama in the interior of the country.
Nature
The Ulla river rises in the parish of Olveda, in Antas de Ulla, although the exact place of its source varies depending on the source consulted. Its name is thought to derive from the Indo-European root wel-, 'to turn', 'swirling water'. From its source it runs 132 kilometres, separating the provinces of A Coruña and Pontevedra except for two short stretches in the municipalities of Vedra and Padrón, before flowing into the ria of Arousa; its basin, covering 2,764 square kilometres, is the second largest in Galicia after that of the Miño river. Its main tributaries are the Arnego and the Deza, and along its course lies the Portodemouros reservoir, one of the most important hydraulic works of its time.
Curiosity
Round loaf made in the traditional way with local flours and slowly baked in a wood-fired oven; together with Ulloa cheese and quality beef it sustains the gastronomic reputation of this Lugo concello.
Nature
The concello brings together seventeen documented castros, spread across parishes such as Amoexa, Olveda and Amarante, as well as numerous mámoas; the very name of Antas refers to those Neolithic megalithic monuments.
Activity
From the hamlet of San Fiz a wide area of rock carvings on the slope of the Farelo can be reached on foot, with concentric circles and cup marks carved into the granite in the open air some four thousand years ago.
Monument
The Noguerol, counts of Amarante, built this fortress in the thirteenth century over an earlier castro; in the seventeenth century a pazo of the same family was added onto it, its coats of arms bearing the lineage's arms still visible on the walls. It stands in the parish of Santo Estevo do Castro de Amarante, whose place-name recalls precisely the old castro settlement on which it sits; the place today has a little over a hundred inhabitants and celebrates its festivals in honour of san Francisco, san Bartolomé and santo Estevo.
Monument
A Romanesque church of the late 12th century, with a rectangular nave and a semicircular apse, with corbels bearing geometric motifs; beside the nave opens a broad gallery on three stone pillars, a solution with no parallel in the municipality.
Monument
The apse window of this Romanesque church was singled out by Jesús Delgado, in his study of the Romanesque of Lugo, as one of the most beautiful of all those he analysed: four foliage capitals and, on one of them, ten human heads in two rows.
Monument
Romanesque work of the second half of the 12th century, with a rectangular nave, a square presbytery and walls of rubble and granite ashlar; the front and side façades were rebuilt in later periods.
Monument
A manorial ensemble raised beside the parish church of Santa Mariña; its tower, most probably dated to the 16th century, stands out for the projecting granite balcony that opens in its upper storey.
Monument
The municipality of Antas de Ulla counts among its monuments the Romanesque porch preserved at the Church of San Martiño de Amarante, one of the medieval remains dotted about the parish where the counts' fortress also stands.
Monument
The jubilee cruceiro of Alvidrón forms a unit with the Romanesque Church of Santa María, and the ensemble appears in the municipality's official list of monuments as one of the most characteristic sights of A Ulloa.
Curiosity
An abandoned spa in the parish of Santa Mariña de Amarante, with a two-storey building, an inner courtyard and a chapel, all now in ruins; its sulphurous spring rises among the rocks at 18 degrees with a flow of forty litres a minute.
Curiosity
On the flat slabs of the Farelo slope fifty-four rock engravings with cup marks, circular combinations, spirals and labyrinths have been inventoried, twenty-two of them located in the 2003 campaign; they are considered among the best-preserved inland rock art groups in Galicia.
Curiosity
From the municipality come some silver spirals of rectangular section found in a prehistoric context and today kept in the Provincial Museum of Pontevedra, one of the most remarkable metal finds in the comarca of A Ulloa.