Would you like to travel with me? An afternoon in a small town with many attractions (Monforte de Lemos, Galicia-Spain).

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Nice to greet you again #Pinmapple friends. Finally, I take time out of my day to day to be able to write in this community again after a few weeks without writing in it. Today I want to introduce you to a small town located in Galicia called Monforte de Lemos. You may wonder how you have discovered this small town with such beautiful places to visit and the answer is as almost always and is that for work reasons I was in this town recently giving a training course.

Monforte de Lemos is a city located in the autonomous community of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. Its population is slightly over 15,000 inhabitants, with the vast majority concentrated in the urban center and to a lesser extent in the parishes surrounding the city. The origin of the city dates back to the Bronze Age, as there are archives documenting the existence of walled settlements from that period. The time in which this city had a more important role was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because it was the capital of the County of Lemos, one of the most important and influential counties at that time. In the 19th century this town also achieved great relevance by becoming the most important railway junction in the autonomous community of Galicia.

Source: Wikipedia

Location of Monforte: Pinmapple Map Capture

Three weeks ago, I was in this city for three days working. The first day, after leaving work, I went to the hotel that my company had booked for me, which was 4 kilometers from the city center. After eating and answering some emails I started to look for information about the places of interest in the city. In the different tourism websites consulted, they agreed on three main points of interest: * The monastery of San Vicente del Pino flanked by the tower of an ancient castle located in the highest part of the city. * A bridge over the river Cabe called "Puente Romano" (Roman Bridge) which dates back to medieval times. * The monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua, which is known as the Galician Escorial due to the similarity with the great monastery of the Escorial in Madrid.

However, since I discovered the #streetart community in every city or town I visit I am always curious to look if there is any mural or graffiti of interest. So before leaving the hotel I did a search on Google Maps and saw that there were 3 works of urban art that it recommended me so I decided to make me a route from one of the graffiti to the other end of the city where the other two works of urban art were so that I would go walking to the river bank cabe from where I could see the Tower of the Old castle, pass by the Roman bridge, cross the park of the counts, stroll through the square in front of the Monastery of Our Lady of Antigua and finally reach the last two murals of urban art that were of my interest. In the following image I leave you a screenshot made in Google Maps with the points of interest and the route I took.


When presenting the different points of interest that I visited and photographed, I have decided to do it by theme and not in the order of appearance during my route, since it is easier for me to present first the works of urban art, due to the fact that two of them make a lot of sense with the history of the city and in particular one of them with one of its monuments that I was also able to photograph.

As I told you, my route was planned with a view to visit the three works of urban art that I had found on the internet. The first piece of urban art that I visited because I parked my car very close to it was a work of the group Rodillo Boys Crew consisting of a mural painted on a small hut representing the head of a man with a somewhat disheveled appearance and that could have some satirical humor with the traditional appearance of the villagers of the 50s or 60s in the area, since as you will see in another of the graffiti of this group of graffiti artists their graffiti always have a humorous side.

The next piece of urban art that I found just 50 meters from the first and shortly before reaching the medieval Roman bridge, was on the side facade of a block of apartments, where you could see an old small mural that with the passage of time was a little deteriorated. The mural represents an easel with a canvas where a landscape is being painted. Unfortunately, I did not see any information about the author on the internet or in travel guides to be able to complete more information about this mural.

At the final point of my tour, I found the mural that had caught my attention in my previous search in the hotel. It is the mural "Scenes of Monforte", where scenes that have or have had great importance for the city are represented in different quadrants. In one of the quadrants is represented a woman grape harvester, since this area is very important for the grape harvest to produce wine with denomination of origin Ribera Sacra. Another quadrant depicts a locomotive, in honor of the importance of the city as a railway hub in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, the upper right quadrant is reserved for one of the emblems of the city, which is the tower of an ancient castle located in the highest area of the city and that in a few lines I will present accompanied by a photograph taken from the promenade next to the first mural presented above.

The last of the murals, or rather in this case graffiti that I visited, is 100 meters from the mural "Scenes of Monforte" and is also a graffiti of the group Rodillo Boys Crew and represents a peculiar passenger train where no one is equal to the others, since one of the messages that appears in the graffiti is that if we were all equal the world would be very boring. Another point that caught my attention and at the same time caused me some fun was to realize that the driver of the train was a bottle, although we do not know if it was a simple bottle of water or a bottle of wine from this beautiful land that is the Ribera Sacra.

From the walk along the bank of the river Cabe, from the first of the graffiti presented above, take a snapshot of this impressive tower that crowns the highest point of Monforte de Lemos. This tower belongs to an ancient castle and is located adjacent to the monastery of San Vicente del Pino, according to information found on Wikipedia the tower was built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and inside it were held the ceremonies of homage, which was the feudal lord with his vassal. The Tower is 30 meters high arranged on four floors, 13 meters wide and its walls are 3 meters thick. Since my objective was to visit the points of interest that were in the lower part of the city, I will visit this tower in future visits to the city, as I plan to return to this city to work in the coming months.

The so-called Roman bridge or old bridge of Monforte de Lemos is a bridge that currently has a medieval origin, but is seated on the foundations of an ancient bridge from Roman times that allowed to pass from one side to the other of the banks of the river cabe that passes through the town of Monforte de Lemos. One of the attractions that I saw to the city, is to be able to make a walk of a couple of kilometers along the banks of this river watching different waterfowl (ducks and geese). As an anecdote, I would like to tell you that while I was taking a picture of this group of geese, I was attacked by one of the males, but this was due to the imprudence of getting too close in order to get a closer picture.

The park of the counts was one of the points where I could take some nice pictures of a green environment in the heart of the city. In the first of the images you can see the typical structure used in Galicia when arranging the vineyards to obtain grapes with albariño denomination of origin. The peculiarity of this type of grape is that it is easily damaged by fungi and for this reason it is always kept away from the ground. As you can see, there are no vineyards in the park, but they do use this type of structure to achieve a shade appreciated by the paths of the park.

At the same time, inside this park I found a nice pond where there were a lot of ducks that looked like they were having a race. Additionally, I also noticed that the surrounding buildings and trees were reflected in the pond and I decided to capture a few photos to use them in the weekly contest of reflections of the #shadowhunters community organized by @olgavita. The last of the photos reflects the monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua, which is the next point of interest that I am going to present of this small but beautiful city.

The monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Antigua, which is a large monastery and a school that incorporates in its central part a large church very similar to the Monastery of El Escorial in Madrid. In fact, consulting the tourism page of the municipality of Monforte de Lemos, this school is called the Galician Escorial.

In front of this building there is a large square surrounded by very flowery gardens.

According to the information I have found at the time of writing this article, inside there is a large pine library with paintings by very important painters such as El Greco.

Monastery Museum

Once I had completed my walk through the city, I returned to the place where I had parked my car and went back to the hotel to find a final pleasant surprise that I want to share with all of you.

When I arrived at the hotel I noticed that there was a big commotion in the parking lot outside the hotel, at first I thought that some politician or some famous person was staying at the hotel. However, I soon realized that what was happening was that about fifteen classic cars were parked in the hotel parking lot. These classic cars were in the hotel because a group of classic car friends from France and Spain make the Camino de Santiago every year in their classic cars. As you can see there are some real automotive gems such as some old Alpine, Thriumph and Alfa Romeo.

I hope you had fun reading this post and traveling virtually to this small town in northwestern Spain.

Best regards and have a nice week out and good weekend.

Original photos taken with my iPhone SE.

Screenshots of Google Maps and Pinmapple map.

Cover and divider created with Canva (free version).

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).

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!ALIVE | !BBH | !PIZZA

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@castri-ja! Your Content Is Awesome so I just sent 1 $BBH (Bitcoin Backed Hive) to your account on behalf of @vocup. (1/5)

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Hiya, @livinguktaiwan here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Honorable Mentions in Daily Travel Digest #1674.

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Pero que hermosos lugares, en definitiva Galicia lo tengo marcado en mis lugares pendientes por conocer.

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Pues hay muchos rincones como este. Espero ir escribiendo mas sobre otros lugares de Galicia y Asturias

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The Place are beautiful 😍 and I would Love to travel with you hehehe 🤩

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