Village
Tui is an episcopal city of about 17,000 inhabitants, capital of the Lower Miño comarca, perched on a hill in the south of the province of Pontevedra, beside the river Miño, which separates it from the Portuguese town of Valença; two bridges, that of the A-55 motorway and the international bridge of Tuy, join the two banks, and since 2012 the two towns have together formed a eurocity. Its cathedral of Santa María, seat of the diocese of Tuy-Vigo, whose founding dates back to Roman times, was begun in the 12th century and bears a doorway from around 1225 held to be the first Gothic work in the Iberian Peninsula. Tui was also the capital of the province of Tuy, one of the seven into which Galicia was divided until 1833.
Monument
A fortress-cathedral begun around 1120 on the Minho facing Valença, with battlements and defensive towers; its western portico, consecrated in 1225, is considered the first group of Gothic sculpture on the Iberian peninsula. It stands on the highest point of the city, over the ancient castro of Tude, and has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1931. Seat of the diocese of Tui-Vigo, it shares episcopal status with the co-cathedral of Vigo since the name of the former diocese of Tui was changed in 1959; the facade, consecrated by bishop Estevo Egea on 1 December 1225, completes works that had begun in full Romanesque style eighty years earlier.
Monument
Built in the second half of the 13th century in Cistercian Gothic, it is the only medieval cloister preserved intact in a Galician cathedral; its four arcades of pointed arches surround a garden overlooking the Minho valley. It is, in fact, an almost unique piece among Spain's cathedrals. The difference in height between the load-bearing Romanesque walls and the Gothic crownings, higher than planned, generated structural problems that were solved with the building's characteristic tie rods; in the side aisles this reinforcement produces the effect of twisted arches. In the 15th century the Torre dos Soutomaiores was added for defence, and in the 16th century the palace and the episcopal quarters were built above its wall-walk, demolished in the 1950s when the see was moved to Vigo.
Monument
An 11th-century Romanesque church raised on Roman and Suevic remains which in 1071 was chosen as the episcopal seat by King García after the Norman sacking of the city; it preserves historiated capitals and 16th-century wall paintings.
Monument
Founded in 1328, its Gothic church later received Baroque alterations and holds an altarpiece dedicated to the Battle of Lepanto; the complex stands on the edge of the old town, next to the gardens that look over the River Miño.
Monument
A viaduct over the Minho river linking Tui (Pontevedra) with Valença, in Portugal, carrying pedestrians, vehicles and the railway. Designed by the engineer and member of parliament Pelayo Mancebo y Agreda, and not by Gustave Eiffel as legend has it, it was built between 1881 and 1884 and officially inaugurated on 25 March 1886 at a cost of six million reales. For more than a hundred years it was the only crossing over the Minho in the area, until other international bridges relieved its traffic. Since 1884 it has formed part of the Portuguese Way of St James, which pilgrims previously crossed by boat; renovated at the end of the year 2000, it remains the only railway connection between Galicia and Portugal, with four trains a day.
Monument
It occupies the former hospital for the poor and for pilgrims built in 1756, three floors laid out around a Baroque courtyard; it brings together sacred art and the historical archive of a diocese documented since Suevic times.
Nature
A fortified settlement of some ten thousand square metres inhabited between the 3rd century BC and the 3rd century AD, with circular dwellings and walls, next to rocks engraved with Bronze Age petroglyphs.
Nature
Mount Aloia, in the Galiñeiro range, was declared a natural park on 4 December 1978, the first in Galicia; it covers 746 hectares within the concello of Tui and rises to 629 metres at the Alto de San Xiao, from where a wide stretch of the Louro and Minho rivers can be seen down to their mouth. It preserves native carballeira oak woodland and riverside vegetation alongside pine and eucalyptus plantations begun in 1910, and is home to wildlife such as the fox, the greater horseshoe bat and the goshawk. Within its grounds were found the remains of a pre-Roman castrexo settlement and other prehistoric remains at the Alto dos Cubos, among axes, hand mills and pottery, as well as a cyclopean wall 1,250 metres long; some attribute the name Aloia to the Roman legion V Alaudae.
Nature
A mountain range that crosses the Pontevedra concellos of Vigo, Gondomar, O Porriño, Mos and Tui in a northwest-southeast direction. It reaches its highest point at Mount Galiñeiro, at 711 metres, whose summit in fact belongs to the concello of Gondomar; other notable peaks are Alba and O Cepudo, in Vigo, and Aloia, in the municipal district of Tui, established as a natural park.
Curiosity
Some ten hectares of medieval lanes perched above the Miño, with 15th-century houses with ogee arches and Renaissance buildings bearing coats of arms; the layout is arranged in concentric rings around the cathedral.
Activity
The city is the point at which the Camino Portugués enters Galicia after crossing the international bridge, and from here little more than a hundred kilometres remain to Compostela, the minimum distance required for the Compostela.
Monument
A Baroque church raised in Tui over the house where, according to tradition, San Telmo died in 1251; its façade in Portuguese Baroque style is a rarity within Galician religious architecture.
Monument
An enclosed convent in the old quarter of Tui, popularly known as o das Encerradas; together with that of San Domingos and that of San Antonio it completes the group of religious houses of the episcopal city.
Monument
A bridge of Roman construction over the río Louro, in the vicinity of the parish of Rebordáns; it formed part of the road that linked ancient Tude with the interior through the valley of the Louriña.
Nature
A tributary of the Miño that runs through the valley of the Louriña and flows out opposite Tui after skirting the monte Aloia; its banks retain alder woods and form an ecological corridor between Vigo and the border. It rises at 400 metres of altitude in the sierra do Galleiro, in the municipality of Pazos de Borbén, and runs for 30 kilometres with a pluvial regime of seasonal flow, highest in February and lowest in August. Along its course it forms the Gándaras de Budiño, an area of lagoons and marshy woodland where remains of the Middle Palaeolithic linked to Neanderthal man have been found and which today is home to more than one hundred and fifty species of vertebrates, including otters, genets, badgers and foxes. The Camino Portugués a Santiago follows its course along the left bank from Tui.
Nature
A depression that opens to the north of Tui between the monte Aloia and the sierra of the Galiñeiro, crossed by the río Louro; it is the natural corridor that connects the episcopal city with the ría of Vigo.
Historical milestone
Fernando II of León ordered the population brought down from the old settlement to the hill that commands the Miño, where the cathedral begun in 1120 already stood; there the present historic quarter was fixed.
Activity
A gastronomic event held in Tui during the first weeks of April and devoted to the meixón, the elver that runs up the Miño; the city's establishments serve tasting portions of the product.
Activity
A Tui festival given over to the products of the river and of the comarca, with tastings of Galician cooking and live music on the banks of the Miño, opposite the international bridge that links the city with Valença.