Village
San Xoán de Río, known officially and in Galician as Río, is a concello in the Ourense comarca of Terra de Trives, situated between the sierra de Castrelo and the 1,286-metre Monte Cerengo, with about 550 inhabitants across 61.1 km². The territory preserves prehistoric remains such as the dolmen das Mamas, the hillfort settlement of Pena dos Castros and several petroglyphs, as well as ancient Roman gold workings in the sierra de Cabanas, known as Os Biocos. The Via Nova once passed through here, which, according to the Antonine Itinerary, linked Braga and Astorga; a Roman bridge over the río Navea survives from it, rebuilt in the 16th century, from which milestones of Titus, Domitian and Constantine were recovered. Its parish church is late Romanesque, with Gothic ribbed vaults.
Monument
A late Romanesque temple completed in 1691 under Abbot Alonso Bermúdez, according to an inscription on the building, with a basilical plan of three naves and a Latin-cross layout, Gothic ribbed vaults in the side chapels, barrel vaults inside, an octagonal dome on squinches and independent apses for each nave. Its Baroque altarpieces date from 1782 and combine plant motifs with Solomonic columns; it also preserves three 18th-century soul panels. The sacristy holds liturgical pieces of artistic value: an 18th-century chalice, a 17th-century censer, a cross and a monstrance.
Monument
A bridge of Roman origin over the river Navea, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, 3.75 metres wide and with an arch of twenty metres; it carried the Vía Nova over the river on the route between Braga and Astorga.
Nature
A megalithic tomb near the village of Cambela that keeps its orthostats visible, one of the few prehistoric monuments on view in a concello of barely 61 square kilometres.
Nature
Iron Age settlement of some one hundred by seventy metres set on the western side of the valley of the river Navea, on a stretch where the channel is wedged into a canyon of very steep slopes. The surroundings are dotted with petroglyphs and rocks engraved with cup marks that document an occupation far earlier than the castro itself.
Nature
Castro settlement in the parish of Castrelo where remains of a wall survive and where pottery has come to light, evidence of prolonged occupation at this headwater of the Navea.
Monument
Remains of a medieval fortress whose stones ended up reused in the building of the castle of Castro Caldelas, a common fate for towers pulled down in the revolts of the 15th century.
Monument
Four open-pit mining cuts opened in antiquity in the Sierra de Cabanas to extract gold, the largest about seventy meters in diameter; they form one of the most legible Roman mining landscapes in the comarca.
Nature
At 1,286 metres it is the highest point in the concello, whose main town already sits at 875 metres; from its summit you look out over the incised valley of the Navea and the native woodland that covers much of the municipal district.
Nature
The River Navea, which forms the boundary with A Pobra de Trives, cuts into a gorge with sheer, wooded slopes, one of the most enclosed river landscapes in inland Ourense.
Curiosity
Seven milestones from the Vía Nova have been recovered in the concello, bearing the names of the emperors Titus, Domitian, Constantius, Julian and Carinus, a remarkable set of inscriptions for so small a municipal district.
Curiosity
Rock engravings preserved at the place of Aira dos Mouros and at other points of the concello, testimony to an occupation of these heights far earlier than the castros and the arrival of Rome; on one of the rocks tradition explains a mark as the hoofprint of the horse of the apostle James when he came to the aid of the Christian kingdoms, and on another nearby two cup marks are preserved.
Nature
A megalithic tomb near the hamlet of Cambela whose orthostats were left exposed when the earth tumulus that covered them was lost, testimony to the first settlers of the Navea valley.
Historical milestone
The Mouruás sword is a Bronze Age sword found in November 1967 in the Pena dos Castros quarry, in the valley of the river Navea, in the hamlet of Mouruás, in San Xoán de Río; it is now kept at the Museum of Ourense. It weighs 820 grams, measures 68.5 centimetres and is broken into two fragments; its double-edged blade and its openwork hilt were cast in a single piece using a two-part mould, a major technical innovation for the time. It is dated to between the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, and belongs to the pistilliform type, related to the Hemigkofen swords of the Rhine. Unlike other weapons found in riverbeds, its appearance among rocks is unusual, and some authors interpret it as a ritual object linked to the control of a strategic pass.
Nature
The Navea valley preserves woods of oak and birch on gentle slopes, one of the best preserved forests of a comarca in which the chestnut occupied much of the hillside.
Monument
A church of Romanesque origin in the parish of Argas, so heavily restored in the eighteenth century that the Baroque dominates it today; beneath those reforms the lines of its medieval fabric can still be made out.
Nature
A reservoir laid out over the río Navea, with some thirty-seven hectares of water surface set among slopes of scrub and chestnut soutos; its banks are one of the quietest corners of the concello.
Activity
A mountain path that crosses the concello's fraga among tiny hamlets and native woodland; it is the best-known itinerary of a municipality whose greatest tourist attraction is precisely its landscapes.