Most beautiful villages in Galicia

Galicia spreads its charm across rías, river valleys and inland hills, and everywhere you go, granite shapes the character of its streets, churches and coat-of-arms-emblazoned manor houses. Among the prettiest villages and towns in Galicia you'll find medieval towns with a mercantile and aristocratic past, episcopal cities looking out over the border and hamlets that grew up around great monasteries. What unites them is that sober, sturdy architecture, the ever-present green of the landscape and a history closely bound to the pilgrimage routes and the power of the Church.

Betanzos, in the province of A Coruña, was one of the old capitals of the Kingdom of Galicia and preserves a historic centre of steep streets, arcades and Gothic churches beside the ría that bears its name. Further south, Tui rises above the Miño facing Portugal, its fortified cathedral dominating the old town and the Portuguese Way to Santiago passing through. In inland Ourense, Oseira changes the tone entirely: here the star is the Cistercian Monastery of Santa María la Real, a vast monumental complex surrounded by hills and silence.

Coast, river and mountains; town, city and monastery. Visiting them lets you grasp the variety of Galicia without straying from its best-known heritage, and choose, depending on your mood, between strolling beneath arcades, gazing at the Miño from a city wall or losing yourself in stone cloisters.