Logbook · 7 places

What to see and do in Vilar de Santos

What to see and do in Vilar de Santos (Limia, Ourense): 7 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Vilar de Santos

Church of San Xoán de Vilar de Santos 250 m

Towns near Vilar de Santos

What to see in Rairiz de Veiga 2.9 km · 7 places
What to see in Sandiás 4.4 km · 9 places
What to see in Xinzo de Limia 6.5 km · 10 places
What to see in Porqueira 8.5 km · 6 places
What to see in Os Blancos 11 km · 4 places
What to see in Allariz 12 km · 22 places
What to see in A Bola 12 km · 4 places
What to see in Xunqueira de Ambía 14 km · 11 places

Spain › Galicia › Ourense › Limia › Vilar de Santos

What to see and do in Vilar de Santos

Vilar de Santos
Village
A municipality of some 780 inhabitants in barely 20 km², included since 2005 in the Área de Allariz Biosphere Reserve; the Vilar de Santos earring turned up here in 1924, a gold jewel decorated with ducks that is kept at the Museo Arqueolóxico de Ourense.
Church of San Xoán de Vilar de Santos
Monument
A parish church that keeps Romanesque features, as does the neighbouring church of Santa María de Parada de Outeiro; the municipality, with only two parishes, also has burial mounds at Laioso, Mosqueiro and Saa and the remains of a Roman villa beside the Vía Nova.
Vilar de Santos earring
Curiosity
The arracada of Vilar de Santos is a piece of Castro-culture gold metalwork, dated to the Iron Age, found by chance in 1924 by Benito Saburido while he was opening a drainage channel at the place called Albariño, in this concello in the province of Ourense; after passing through private hands, it was acquired in 1979 by the Museo Arqueolóxico Provincial de Ourense, where it is kept. It stands out for its technical complexity -repoussé, filigree and granulation- and for its unique ornithomorphic decoration, with a water bird holding a bunch of grapes, as well as five conical capsules on its triangular body, a motif typical of the arracadas of A Limia. That it was found isolated and at a certain depth suggests it was hidden, probably ahead of the Roman conquest, by owners who were never able to recover it.
Área de Allariz Biosphere Reserve at Vilar de Santos
Nature
Since 25 June 2005 this concello has been part of the biosphere reserve declared by Unesco together with Allariz, Rairiz de Veiga and A Bola, four municipalities of the province of Ourense that bring together under a single designation the veigas of the upper Limia and the Arnoia valley, over 21,482 hectares and fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. It is a broad, flat-bottomed depression, at an average altitude of 600 metres, through which the Limia river flows, surrounded by a mountainous rim from which the granite massif of Allariz stands out to the north, cut through by the entrenched Arnoia river. Its biogeographic interest lies in being a border territory between the Mediterranean and Eurosiberian regions, with fauna that includes the wolf and numerous endemic Iberian amphibians.
Saa village
Activity
A rural settlement restored from the late 1990s as accommodation and a visitable space, in a setting where prehistoric burial mounds survive; it was one of the first attempts at rehabilitating an entire hamlet in A Limia.
The Regional Museum of A Limia
Monument
Opened in 1992 in a refurbished rectory house, it brings together the ethnographic and archaeological collections of the comarca. Among its pieces figures a pre-Roman gold earring found in the concello itself.
The discovery of the earring of Vilar de Santos
Historical milestone
In 1924, while Benito Saburido was digging a drainage channel, a pre-Roman gold earring from the Iron Age turned up by chance at the site of Albariño — one of the most notable pieces of castro goldwork from the Limia region for its complex technique and its singular bird decoration. Its isolated find, at a certain depth, suggests it was hidden amid the instability of the Roman conquest, with the intention of recovering it later, which never came to happen. After passing through private hands, it was acquired in 1979 by the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Ourense, where it is preserved and exhibited today.