Village
Allariz is a town of about 6,500 inhabitants on the banks of the Arnoia river, in the province of Ourense, Galicia, which grew out of a castro that dominated the river crossing. In the 6th century, under Suebian rule, it is documented as Vila Aliaricii; in the 11th, Alfonso VI had the castle and walls built, and in the 12th, Alfonso VII granted it the fuero of Villa Real, while Sancho IV called it the Key to the Kingdom of Galicia. Alfonso X the Wise was educated here as a child. Its old town, declared a conjunto histórico-artístico (Spanish protection designation for urban areas of historic-artistic interest) in 1971 and awarded the European Prize for Urban Planning in 1994 for its restoration, preserves the convent of Santa Clara, founded in 1268, where in 1327 Infante Felipe of Castile asked to be buried. The town celebrates the Festa do Boi during Corpus Christi.
Monument
Founded in 1268 by Queen Violante, wife of Alfonso X, the convent of Poor Clares was rebuilt in the 18th century after the fire of 1757 and preserves an enormous Baroque cloister; its museum of sacred art holds a 13th-century opening Virgin.
Monument
Romanesque church of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with a basilican plan of three naves, a false triforium and historiated doorways, an uncommon case in Galician rural Romanesque; its apse end is described sometimes as having three apses and sometimes a single semicircular one. It guards the relics of the martyr Mariña, tied to the place by her legendary martyrdom, and it heads a historic-artistic ensemble that includes the springs of Augas Santas.
Monument
Built around 1119, it is an archetypal example of Galician popular Romanesque, with a single nave and a semicircular apse with figurative decoration. Later a Gothic body with arches, a chapel and a sacristy was added on the north side.
Monument
Consecrated in 1173, this Romanesque church preserves remains of its old cloister and a fortified tower of military inspiration; the doorway moved from the vanished church of San Salvador de Piñeiro was built into its south wall.
Monument
A bridge of Romanesque design over the Arnoia, rebuilt several times over the centuries, with a deck broken at an angle and the municipal coat of arms carved on the parapet; it gives access to the Vilanova quarter from the walled town.
Monument
A fortress begun between 1072 and 1078 under Alfonso VI, rectangular in plan with four round towers at the corners; it withstood a nine-month irmandiño siege in 1471 and was dismantled in the middle of the 19th century with the disentailment.
Curiosity
The unfinished remains of a 13th-century Romanesque basilica raised over a crypt that tradition identifies with the oven in which Santa Mariña burned and that archaeologists link to a castro sauna connected with the nearby hillfort of Armea.
Monument
It occupies the former tannery of the Nogueiras family, an 18th-century building, square in plan with a large central courtyard, beside the Arnoia; refurbished by a training workshop, it opened as a museum in 1995 and still houses a working craftsman.
Curiosity
The ensemble was declared historic-artistic in 1971 and its plan of integral recovery received the European Urban Planning Prize in 1994; within its layout the Jewish quarter of Socastelo survives, documented in the 13th century below the castle.
Nature
With 87 kilometres of course, the Arnoia crosses the district from east to west and drove the mills and tanneries of the Portovello quarter; its banks were restored as a riverside park within the urban planning project awarded a prize in 1994.
Nature
At 927 metres it is the greatest elevation in the municipality of Allariz, whose territory is divided into sixteen parishes running down from these heights to the Arnoia valley, on the eastern rim of the Ourense depression.
Activity
The Festa do Boi is a popular festival in Allariz, in the province of Orense: it consists of running a bull through the streets of the old town, controlled by young men with a rope tied to its horns. It has been held since the 14th century (1317), coinciding with Corpus Christi: tradition tells that a nobleman, Xan de Arzúa, rode a bull to charge at some Jewish neighbours who were mocking the procession, and ever since local residents have repeated the feat every year, also represented by a straw effigy hung from the town hall balcony. Suspended during the Civil War, a group of young men revived it in 1983, and since 1988 it has been kept alive by the association of the same name; in 2006 it was declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico de Galicia (official tourism recognition).
Monument
An unfinished twelfth-century church raised over an earlier crypt in the parish of Santa Mariña de Augas Santas: the walls and the springings of the pillars are preserved, but it was never roofed or consecrated.
Monument
Convent founded in 1268 by Queen Violant of Aragon, wife of Alfonso X the Wise, who wished to be buried there. The original 13th-century temple gave way over time to the present building, dating from the 18th century, which preserves a single-nave church and the largest baroque cloister in Spain. Its museum of sacred art brings together pieces belonging to the Poor Clares, a community present since the convent's foundation, among them the virxe abrideira and the crystal cross; as it is an enclosed convent, only the church and the museum can be visited.
Nature
Declared by Unesco on 25 June 2005, the reserve covers the concellos of Allariz, A Bola, Vilar de Santos and Rairiz de Veiga, with an area of 21,482 hectares and a population of under 10,000 inhabitants. It consists of a broad depression, with an average altitude of 600 metres, through which flows the river Limia, surrounded by a mountainous rim from which the granite massif of Allariz stands out to the north, hemmed in by the river Arnoia; the altitude ranges between 425 and 927 metres. It has great biogeographical importance as a border territory between the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian worlds, with deciduous forest, a mosaic of meadows and the Lagoa de Antela as a notable wetland; its fauna includes the wolf, the otter and significant populations of waterfowl.
Curiosity
An underground chamber beneath the unfinished basilica of Augas Santas, interpreted as a castro sauna reused as a place of Christian worship; tradition identifies it with the oven where Saint Mariña would have been burned.
Nature
The castro of Armeá, also called Augas Santas, is located at the place of Armeá, in the parish of the same name in the concello of Allariz (Ourense), and was occupied between the 4th-3rd centuries BC and the 4th century AD, with a Roman urban phase in which paved streets, rectangular-plan dwellings and rock-cut structures carved into the granite outcrop have been documented. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1963 and today a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it was excavated by Conde Valvís, who found a castrexo sauna and indigenous and Roman remains now in the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Ourense. Nearby there are also two basins carved into the rock, As Pías or Baños de Santa Mariña, which Conde Valvís linked to a possible olive press.
Monument
A collection devoted to the Galician toy and its manufacturers, with pieces of tinplate, wood and plastic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as popular games of the country that are explained within the exhibition route itself.
Historical milestone
Queen Violante of Aragon, wife of Alfonso X, founded at Allariz in 1286 a monastery of Poor Clares to which she ended up retiring and in which she arranged for her burial; the community has kept conventual life there ever since. Her patronage turned the town into a royal residence and into one of the seven capitals of the Kingdom of Galicia.
Historical milestone
The project for the comprehensive recovery of the historic-artistic site and of the banks of the Arnoia, begun in the late 1980s with a rehabilitation office and a training workshop, receives the European award in 1994.
Food and drink
A show held on the second weekend of November around the seasonal products of the comarca: chestnuts, walnuts, mushrooms and artisan bread, with mycological exhibitions and live cooking.