Three rings of walls. A hill rising 153 metres less than five kilometres from the Atlantic. One of the oldest castro settlements in the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula — occupied from the late Bronze Age through the Roman period, with an orthogonal street grid in its final phase and a dry-stone defensive system of exceptional construction.
Cividade de Terroso was not a village. It was a city. It played a leading role in the early urbanisation of the region in the first millennium BCE, functioning as one of the oldest and largest castro settlements, and formed part of established maritime trade routes with Mediterranean civilisations. Here were found the Earrings of Laundos and the articulated necklace of Estela — gold and silver jewellery revealing contact with advanced Mediterranean techniques including filigree and granulation.
From the summit, the Atlantic is visible. The position was not strategic by accident. It was the position of those who watch the horizon — and know what comes from the sea.