Village
Vilariño de Conso is a concello of barely 500 inhabitants across 200 km² of near-empty land, between the sierra da Queixa and the montes do Invernadeiro, at altitudes of between 630 and 1,500 metres. It holds the das Portas reservoir, on the río Camba, the largest by capacity in the province, and that of Cenza, one of the highest in Spain, whose waterfall, the fervenza do Cenza, drops 105 metres; the Cenza valley, of glacial origin, preserves remains of pre-Roman hillforts and a stretch of the Roman Via Nova road, along which gold was transported. Atop a hill at 1,550 metres stand the ruins of the castelo de Cerveira, a fortified enclosure with 250 metres of walls. Its cuisine is notable for the trout and eels of its rivers, and for chorizos and androllas.
Nature
Declared a natural park on 5 June 1997, it covers 5,722 hectares lying entirely within the municipality, between the Grande and Pequena riverbanks; access requires prior authorisation, which keeps it one of the most unspoilt places in Galicia.
Nature
A reservoir on the River Camba, at some 900 metres of altitude, whose 141-metre dam is the tallest in Galicia; it gathers the waters coming down from the Invernadeiro natural park and is the second largest Galician reservoir.
Nature
A sheet of water of 238 hectares at some 1,345 metres of altitude in the north of the municipality, among the highest in Spain; it occupies a former glacial valley carved out of the Serra de Queixa.
Nature
The fervenza do Cenza is a natural waterfall on the río Cenza, a tributary of the Bibei, as it passes through the parish of Castiñeira, in the concello of Vilariño de Conso. A stepped waterfall of nearly a hundred metres of drop, it is considered the highest indirect fall in all of Galicia; a wooden walkway leads to a viewpoint at its head. Its flow has been affected by a quarry located nearby.
Nature
A great waterfall that plunges from high on the mountain above the hamlet of Edrada; a wooden viewpoint installed by the municipality allows it to be seen head-on without having to go down to the streambed.
Nature
A field of granite blocks left by the ice close to Chaguazoso, evidence of the Quaternary glaciation that shaped these valleys; it is one of the most visible groups of moraines in south-eastern Galicia.
Nature
A massif that closes the municipality off to the north and reaches heights of more than 1,500 metres; its heaths and glacial valleys are home to wolf, roe deer and red deer and feed the rivers Camba, Conso and Cenza.
Monument
A fortified enclosure at some 1,550 metres of altitude, with a walled perimeter of close to 430 metres built of slate slabs; today only stretches of wall and traces of the settlement's dwellings remain.
Monument
A small single-arched bridge over the River Cerveira, built of local stone and traditionally attributed to the Roman period; the waymarked route that climbs to the castle of Cerveira starts beside it.
Monument
A parish church on a rectangular plan with a round-arched doorway which preserves 17th-century liturgical ornaments; it presides over the capital of a municipality spread across nine mountain parishes.
Monument
The parish church of the hamlet of Sabuguido, cited among the municipality's principal heritage features; it is built with the slate rubble masonry characteristic of the architecture of these ranges.
Monument
A manor house in the parish of Conso, one of the three catalogued noble buildings in the municipality along with the great house of Mormentelos and the pazo of Entrecinsa, in a valley lying above 900 metres.
Monument
A gentry house in the parish of Mormentelos, whose church is dedicated to Nosa Señora do O; it appears alongside the pazo of Conso and that of Entrecinsa among the municipality's inventoried manorial buildings.
Nature
An Iron Age fortified settlement at Entrecinsa, one of the three catalogued castros in the municipality along with those of Pradoalbar and Sabuguido, in an area crossed by a secondary branch of the Roman Vía Nova.
Curiosity
A communal wolf trap at more than 1,300 metres of altitude, near the Cenza dam; two long converging walls led to the pit into which the animals fell, a village practice documented over centuries.
Curiosity
Graves cut into the rock in the outline of a human body, in the parish of San Mamede de Hedrada; they are among the oldest early medieval traces of Christian settlement in the municipality.
Monument
A municipal collection devoted to rural life in these ranges, with tools, traditional dress and a section on the local entroido, whose great Sunday is given over to the celebration of kid goat.
Monument
A facility devoted to the mycology of the central Ourense massif, with panels, models and samples of the edible species gathered in the chestnut groves and heaths around the Invernadeiro.
Activity
A swing and viewpoint installed at some thousand metres of altitude, presented as the highest panoramic swing in Galicia; from it one looks out over the Camba valley and the tail of the Portas reservoir.
Activity
A waymarked trail, the PR-G 146, circular and of some ten kilometres, linking the Pradoalbar bridge with the fortified enclosure of Cerveira and negotiating a steep climb through chestnut groves and mountain scrub.
Activity
A waymarked trail, the PR-G 118, which runs in a circle through the municipality's chestnut woods and links slate-built hamlets, with an optional detour to the reservoir; Vilariño de Conso forms part of the European Chestnut Route.