Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Valley

Overview

The Côa valley holds the largest open-air gallery of Palaeolithic art in the world: thousands of horses, aurochs, deer and human figures engraved on the schist cliffs of a tributary of the Douro in the north-east of Portugal, between 22,000 and 10,000 years old, discovered during the building of a dam in the early 1990s and saved when the dam was cancelled in 1995. UNESCO listed the sites in 1998 and extended the listing to Siega Verde across the border in Spain in 2010.

The engravings are seen only with the guides of the Archaeological Park, in small groups driven out from Vila Nova de Foz Côa to the sites at Penascosa, Canada do Inferno and Ribeira de Piscos, by day or by night with lamps that make the lines stand out; the Côa Museum on its cliff above the confluence with the Douro is the introduction and the shelter from the heat.

History

The oldest figures, of 22,000 to 20,000 BC, are animals; horses appear in the Solutrean around 20,000 to 18,000 BC and the finest work, aurochs with nostrils and mouths, horses with their manes, deer, belongs to the Magdalenian of 16,000 to 10,000 BC. Later peoples added their own: semi-naturalistic animals of the Epipalaeolithic, geometric figures of the Neolithic, Bronze Age men, Iron Age warriors with weapons carved by Celtiberian tribes, and finally, from the 17th to the 20th century, saints, dates, boats, trains and aeroplanes cut by millers and shepherds.

The Pocinho dam had already drowned part of the valley when, in November 1991, the archaeologist Nelson Rebanda found the first panels during studies for a new dam at Foz Côa; the electricity company tried to dispute their age and press on, the news broke in 1994, UNESCO’s Jean Clottes called it the biggest open-air Palaeolithic site in Europe if not the world, and a citizens’ movement took up the slogan “the engravings can’t swim”. The 1995 election changed the government and in November 1995 António Guterres cancelled the dam. The Archaeological Park and the National Centre for Rock Art followed in 1997, the World Heritage listing in 1998, and the Côa Museum, by Tiago Pimentel and Camilo Rebelo, was built from 2007.

Visiting

Book with the Parque Arqueológico do Vale do Côa in Vila Nova de Foz Côa; the sites are not open to unaccompanied visitors and the guided trips leave from the park’s reception points in the town and the villages, by four-wheel-drive down to the river. Penascosa, near Castelo Melhor, is the classic, with its horses and aurochs on the low panels by the water and the night visits that light them from the side; Canada do Inferno, below the museum, is the site the discovery began at and lies partly under the reservoir; Ribeira de Piscos has the engraved human figures and a superimposed horse.

The Côa Museum stands on the cliff above the meeting of the Côa and the Douro, a concrete wedge dug into the hillside with exhibitions on the art, the dating and the fight over the dam, and a terrace over both rivers; start here.

Tips

• Book days ahead in summer and for the night visits, which are the best way to see the lines; group sizes are small and the slots go.
• The valley is one of the hottest places in Portugal in July and August; morning or night, water and a hat.
• Foz Côa is reached by the Douro line to Pocinho and a taxi, or by the IP2; it is a long way from anywhere and worth an overnight.
• Siega Verde, across the border near Ciudad Rodrigo, is the Spanish half of the listing with 94 panels and can be combined by car.

Nearby

• Vila Nova de Foz Côa: the park’s base, 8 km from the museum.
• Pocinho station, the end of the Douro line: 10 km.
• Alto Douro wine region: the Douro Superior begins here.
• Castelo Melhor village: beside the Penascosa site.