Village
Lobios is a concello of Ourense with about 1,800 inhabitants on the dry border (raia seca) with Portugal, within the Baja Limia y Sierra del Xurés natural park, with which it shares the border crossings of Portela do Home and A Madalena. In the parish of Río Caldo it preserves the Roman baths of Aquis Originis, a staging post on the Vía Nova between Braga and Astorga, together with thermal waters that today feed a spa, and the sanctuary of Nosa Señora do Xurés. The municipality, divided into ten parishes and seventy-five population centres, also offers viewpoints such as that of A Cela, the hamlet of the same name with its houses wedged among the rocks, and the remains of old villages now submerged beneath the Lindoso reservoir, visible in the summer months when the water level drops.
Monument
One of the eleven mansio, inns run by the State for travellers' rest, that marked the course of the Vía XVIII between Bracara Augusta and Astúrica Augusta; it is located at mile 39 of this road, next to the river Caldo, in the heart of the Baixa Limia and Serra do Xurés natural park (Lobios, Orense). Its original construction, from the High Empire, is razed; what survives corresponds to a second phase from the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, with alterations up to the late 4th or early 5th centuries, and it made use of the site's thermal springs with an original extent of around 500 square metres, equipped with private thermal complexes and peristyles. The site was discovered by chance and excavated between 1989 and 1995 by the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Orense.
Monument
The Miliarios da Portela do Home are preserved next to this mountain pass in the serra do Xurés, in the parish of Río Caldo, within the municipality of Lobios, at the southernmost point of Galicia and on the boundary with the Portuguese Peneda-Gerês National Park. The Roman road Vía Nova, which linked Bracara Augusta with Astorga, ran through here; just past the Portuguese border lies the largest number of these milestones documented anywhere in the Roman Empire, and it is debated whether there was a quarry there where they were carved or whether they were gathered together at a later period. The pass, at 822 metres above sea level, was the scene in 1384 of the retreat of the army of Henry of Trastámara; as a border crossing it kept a customs post open until the Schengen agreement came into force in 1992.
Monument
A church in the parish of Río Caldo that is the main focus of pilgrimage in the sierra, with its feast day on 8 July; it stands at the heart of a municipality of ten parishes pressed hard against the raia seca, the dry land border with Portugal.
Nature
The Baixa Limia-Serra do Xurés Natural Park, declared on 11 March 1993, is the largest and most rugged of the Galician natural parks, and the only one with Mediterranean-type flora and fauna. It extends across the Laboreiro, Xurés and Pena mountain ranges, in the Orense municipalities of Lobios, Entrimo, Muíños, Lobeira and Calvos de Randín, up to the border with Portugal, where it links with the Peneda-Gerês national park; since 2009 it has formed with that park the Gerês-Xurés cross-border Biosphere Reserve. In Lobios lies the Santa Eufemia mountain range, with its eponymous 1115-metre peak, on the boundary with Arcos de Valdevez and Ponte da Barca (Portugal). Other peaks in the park exceed 1300 metres, such as Coto Dourado, in the serra do Laboreiro.
Nature
Spanish-Portuguese biosphere reserve recognised by Unesco in 2009, which links the Galician natural park of Baixa Limia and Serra do Xurés, in the Orense municipality of Lobios, with the Portuguese national park of Peneda-Gerês. It covers 260,000 hectares of tributaries of the river Limia, such as the Vez, the Homen and the Cávado, as they pass through the Xurés, Quinxo and Santa Eufemia mountain ranges, a granite mountain area with peaks such as the Nevosa and the Fontefría and rivers with an almost straight course. 24 per cent of its surface lies in Spanish territory, classified as a core zone of the highest importance for conservation. It is one of the largest cross-border reserves in the European Union and is jointly managed by Spain and Portugal.
Nature
A seasonal stream that drops nearly four hundred metres in little more than a kilometre through falls and pools, some of them twenty metres high, before feeding the River Caldo; it is only seen in full flow after heavy rain.
Curiosity
On 8 January 1992 the Portuguese electricity company closed the gates of the Lindoso reservoir and flooded this hamlet in the parish of Manín along with Buscalque, O Vao and A Reloeira; in droughts it reappears out of the mud.
Activity
Open-air pools fed by the same springs the Romans used at the mansio of Aquis Originis, on the banks of the River Caldo; the water rises very hot and cools as it mixes with the current.
Activity
A waymarked route that follows road XVIII between the Portela do Home and Santa Comba de Bande, climbing the Caldo valley by the line along which the Roman engineers overcame the gradients of the sierra.
Monument
An isolated chapel on the slope of the monte do Grou, in the sierra of the Leboreiro; beside it extends a tumular necropolis, a sign that the place was already sacred long before the arrival of Christianity.
Monument
A hermitage of the parish of San Salvador de Manín, in the interior of Lobios; together with the nearby chapel of San Isidro it forms the small ensemble of minor religious architecture of this valley of the Xurés Natural Park.
Nature
The río Caldo gives its name to the parish of Santa María de Río Caldo, in the concello of Lobios, and flows into the Limia next to the balneario of Os Baños, with its thermal waters and river beach. Along its lower stretch ran the Roman Vía Nova, which led to the road station of Aquis Originis, of which milestones survive; nearby also stands the ermida da Virxe do Xurés. Today it retains the Espendelo recreation area as a place to enjoy its waters.
Nature
A mountain stream of the Xurés Natural Park followed by a circular path of 1.7 kilometres that links restored mills, rapids and bathing pools set among blocks of granite.
Curiosity
A group of megalithic tumuli spread across the monte do Grou, around the hermitage of San Bieito; to these is added, in the same concello, the anta do Couto, one of the visible dolmens of the Baixa Limia.
Activity
A circular path of some four kilometres that climbs from the bottom of the valley to the sanctuary of the Xurés, among granite blocks and mountain scrub, within the largest natural park in Galicia.
Monument
The Museo Numismático de Lobios, housed in the town hall building itself, is a permanent exhibition of Galician coinage promoted by the local numismatist Jaime Paz Bernardo, from Quintela, and opened on 30 July 1996 by the then president of the Xunta, Manuel Fraga. That same year it received the Excellent Numismatic Merit award from the Asociación Numismática Española. Its holdings bring together pieces minted in or related to Galicia from Antiquity to the Early Modern period, among them an as of Octavio Augusto minted around the year 25 BC in Lucus Augusti, considered the first coin minted in Galicia, a billon dinero of Alfonso IX minted in Santiago de Compostela, and maravedís of the Catholic Monarchs from the Real Casa de la Moneda de La Coruña.
Activity
A gastronomic festival held in Lobios during the second half of August around tripe stewed in the Limia style, a slaughter dish that here is served at a popular open-air tasting.