The Citânia de Briteiros is one of the most significant protohistoric settlements in the Iberian Peninsula, notable for its size, the monumentality of its walls, its urban organisation, and its architecture. Its study began in 1874, when Francisco Martins Sarmento directed the first archaeological campaign — and, to protect the land being uncovered, bought it himself, an unprecedented act in Portugal. (Wikipedia)
The initial use of Monte de São Romão dates to the Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic, when rock art panels were carved into the granite outcrops of the hillside. As a settlement, occupation dates from the early 1st millennium BC, in the Atlantic Bronze Age. The citânia's golden period runs from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC through the turn of the era. (Wikipedia) With 20 hectares, four lines of walls, and an urban layout including streets, residential blocks, fountains, and bathhouses, calling it a city is not an overstatement.
Its most celebrated monument is the Pedra Formosa. It belonged to a castro bathhouse — not a cremation furnace, as was believed for decades, but a steam bath structure of sauna type, used in the initiation rituals of the indigenous communities. (Visitesposende) It is a granite monolith nearly three metres wide and over two metres tall, profusely decorated, with a semicircular opening in its lower section. (Patrimoniocultural) The decoration covers geometric motifs, spirals, and interlacings — the same visual language that runs through this entire territory, from Neolithic to Iron Age. The low oval aperture through which one entered the steam chamber has the form of a threshold: a door into another state.
The history of the Pedra Formosa is itself an act of deep mapping: it fell from the top of the citânia, was transported to the churchyard of Briteiros in 1718 using eleven teams of oxen, and was brought back up by Martins Sarmento in 1876 using twenty-four teams. It now stands in the Museu da Cultura Castreja in São Salvador de Briteiros. (Patrimoniocultural) A stone that has been moved by oxen, by arms, by curiosity, by science — that has been altar, funerary monument, liturgical object, and work of art. That has never stopped being all four things simultaneously.
When to visit: Entrance fee. A visit to the Museu da Cultura Castreja is strongly recommended before ascending the castro. The Museu Martins Sarmento in Guimarães holds the original Pedra Formosa.
