Logbook · 10 places

What to see and do in Pontecesures

What to see and do in Pontecesures (Caldas, Pontevedra): 10 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Activities · 3 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Pontecesures

Leper house of San Lois 100 m
Ulla River in Pontecesures 1.7 km

Towns near Pontecesures

What to see in Padrón 2.1 km · 36 places
What to see in Valga 3.5 km · 9 places
What to see in Dodro 5.1 km · 21 places
What to see in Rois 6.4 km · 15 places
What to see in Catoira 8.3 km · 9 places
What to see in Teo 11 km · 9 places
What to see in Cuntis 12 km · 11 places
What to see in Caldas de Reis 13 km · 11 places

Spain › Galicia › Pontevedra › Caldas › Pontecesures

What to see and do in Pontecesures

Pontecesures
Village
Pontecesures is a concello of barely 7 km² and about 3,000 inhabitants on the left bank of the Ulla, a river navigable up to this point and which forms the boundary with the province of A Coruña; until 1926 it was a parish of the municipality of Valga. The settlement grew up beside a Roman bridge, beneath whose present-day harbour remains of the old portus have been found, with Roman pottery and coins from Tiberius to Constantine III. In the 12th century, the archbishop of Santiago Diego Gelmírez set up a pilgrim shipyard here to build vessels against the Berber pirates who attacked English pilgrims; these ships later took part in the taking of Coimbra, an episode that gave rise to the iconography of the Santiago Matamoros. Asorey and Castelao both worked at its Cerámica Celta factory.
Church of San Xulián de Requeixo
Monument
The church of San Xulián de Requeixo, in the parish of the same name in the concello of Pontecesures, is a temple of Romanesque origin whose construction, over an earlier building, was ordered by Diego Xelmírez. Rectangular in plan and with a single nave, it is built of roughly squared stone with corbels beneath the eaves, and a bell tower rises above the façade. Through this parish, after crossing the bridge over the río Ulla, runs the Camino Portugués on its way to Padrón.
Tobacco warehouse
Monument
A warehouse built in the time of Carlos IV to store the tobacco that came up the Ulla, with the Bourbon coat of arms still above the door; it recalls the years when the town was the river port through which goods came in.
Ulla River in Pontecesures
Nature
The last navigable stretch of the río Ulla, directly across from Padrón, where lamprey are still caught with traditional gear; its port moved sand and goods until the 1970s and today serves as a riverside promenade. The settlement of Pontecesures grew up next to a Roman bridge, on the left bank of the river, at the point up to which it is navigable. The Ulla rises in the parish of Olveda, in Antas de Ulla, receives the Arnego and the Deza as its main tributaries, separates the provinces of A Coruña and Pontevedra along almost its entire course, and flows into the ría de Arousa after 132 kilometres, with a basin of 2,764 km², the second largest in Galicia after that of the Miño.
Leper house of San Lois
Curiosity
A group of seven buildings run by the Obra Pía de San Lázaro, an institution that cared for lepers and pilgrims on the route to Santiago; its cruceiro is one of the most often cited in the municipality.
Stone of the Serpents
Curiosity
A rock carved at Camporredondo with circles and labyrinth motifs that popular tradition read as serpents; the surrounding area has also yielded hillforts and Roman finds, among them altars dedicated to Lar and to Jupiter.
Festival of a Lamprea de Pontecesures
Activity
In the last week of April the town devotes a festival to the lamprey caught in the final stretch of the Ulla, a fish still handled with gear inherited from the river's old freshwater fishery.
Palace of a Cova
Monument
An eighteenth-century seigneurial house raised near the river, testimony to the prosperity that the place owed to its condition as a river port and obligatory crossing between Pontevedra and the lands of Iria.
Requeixo Foliada
Curiosity
A local dance for three couples to the rhythm of a slow muiñeira in which the women dance holding three kinds of sweets on their heads, a choreography that is repeated nowhere else.
Xelmírez's shipyard in Cesures
Historical milestone
In the 12th century, Archbishop Diego Xelmírez had a shipyard built in the port on the Ulla, in Pontecesures, to fit out ships to counter Norman and Muslim raids on the Galician coast.