Archaeological - natural site of Santomé

Overview

The Conxunto arqueolóxico-natural de Santomé is an excavated Iron Age hillfort and late Roman settlement on a wooded spur about 3 km from the centre of Ourense, above the river Loña. Two settlements sit within a few minutes’ walk of each other: a castro on the rocky crown, and, on the flat ground below it, two stone houses built around courtyards roughly three centuries later. Both are consolidated, signposted and open without a ticket.

What makes the visit worth the short trip out of the city is that the two phases are legible side by side. In the castro you can see hearths set against room walls, walls that mix straight runs with rounded corners, and living rock that was smoothed and reused as house wall or hollowed into basins. Down on the level ground the plan changes completely: rectangular rooms in rows, a north-facing gallery, an outdoor staircase, a courtyard doing the job of a Roman atrium.

Nothing about it is grand. The walls stand knee to waist high, there is no reconstruction, and the interpretation is done entirely by panels. Two hours is the figure the provincial tourist board gives for the visit, and that is about right if you walk the paved street, the castro and the two houses without hurrying.

History

The castro, mid 1st century BC to mid 2nd century AD

The hillfort occupies a spur with a steep drop to the south and south west, where the Loña does the defensive work on its own. On the approachable northern side the builders added a wall with a tower and a ditch, and ringed the slope with concentric walls that doubled as terracing, since the natural ground was too steep to hold houses otherwise. Pottery types put the start of occupation around the middle of the 1st century BC, and it ran on to the middle of the 2nd century AD, which makes Santomé a late example of the castro culture rather than an early one.

The Roman village on the slope

In the first quarter of the 1st century AD a second settlement spread down the northern flank of the hill while the castro above was still lived in. Very little of its architecture survives, because the later Roman buildings were put up on top of it, but its rubbish is unmistakable. The two communities were neighbours and contemporaries, yet they lived differently. The castro produced pottery in the standard castro repertoire with few imports. The village below produced samian ware made in Gaul, pottery from Clunia and glass vessels of Mediterranean type.

Around the middle of the 2nd century AD both settlements were destroyed or abandoned and the hill was left empty.

The late Roman houses, 3rd century AD onwards

A century after the abandonment the flat ground was built on again, and this is the phase you see most clearly today. Two building units were excavated, both organised around an open central space acting as a courtyard in the manner of a Roman atrium. Roman forms and older local habits sit together in the same walls, producing a house type that went on being built in rural Galicia long afterwards.

The unit east of the street is the larger. Its core is three rooms behind a gallery on the north front, entered through the most elaborate doorway on the site, with an external staircase set at right angles to the building that still preserves six steps in its run. The staircase served an upper floor with an open gallery carried on wooden posts; one post base survives in place, with the notch cut to seat the timber. An upper storey is rare in Roman rural housing, which is part of why the site was chosen for display.

Digging, and opening the site

Santomé was not a site the antiquarians knew. It was brought to notice by Manuel Blanco Guerra, a town councillor who dug exploratory test pits as an amateur between 1969 and 1974. Systematic scientific excavation began in 1983 under the Museo Arqueolóxico Provincial de Ourense, working with the Grupo Marcelo Macías, and it was that campaign that established how long and how variously the hill had been occupied.

Turning it into something visitable took funding in two stages: a 2000 agreement between the Grupo Marcelo Macías and the body administering European PRODER funds, then selection in the 2002 to 2003 round of the Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza. The walls were consolidated first, then the panels went in. The land belongs to the city council.

Visiting

There is no gate, no ticket office and no fixed opening time. Access is free and unrestricted, and the provincial tourist board simply lists the hours as open visiting. Nobody is on site. The wooden information stand at the entrance was staffed by contracted history graduates for a period after the site opened, but that arrangement ended and was not replaced.

Getting there

By car, take the road that runs from Ourense towards Velle, the old Monforte road, cross the river Loña, and turn right onto the track that leads to the site. About 500 m past that turning the track splits: the left branch carries on by car, the right runs up to the Colexio Público de Mende, where you leave the car and walk the rest. There is signage from the main roads.

The route round the site

The museum’s own advice is to walk up the paved street to the castro first and leave the buildings on the flat ground until afterwards. The street is itself one of the exhibits: a cleared run 33 m long and 3 to 4 m wide, flagged with medium stones bedded and keyed with smaller ones and with roof tile, dropping steeply towards the river alongside the castro embankment. It forks almost immediately, right for the hard climb to the castro, left towards the water.

Up on the crown you get the walls, the terracing, the hearths and the worked outcrops, plus a view of the city that most visitors never see, with the As Lagoas district in the foreground. Coming back down, the two late Roman units flank the street. Look for the six surviving stair treads and the post base on the eastern unit, and the trébede bench inside.

The panels are the whole of the interpretation and they are better than most. Each one is written on three levels of detail and carries a 3D reconstruction, so you can stand in one spot and hold the consolidated ruin and the digital rebuild in the same field of view. They were sited to stay visually quiet while still marking out a route you are free to walk in any order.

Tips

• Entry costs nothing and there is nothing to book. Treat any offer of a paid guided visit as a private arrangement rather than an official one, because the site has no staff and no ticketing.

• Wear shoes with grip. The paved street runs steeply down towards the river on flagstones that are polished by use, and the castro is reached up a sharp climb over irregular ground.

• Park at the Colexio Público de Mende and walk the last stretch. The flagged medieval track is one of the better things here and you skip it entirely if you drive to the top.

• Go in daylight and allow the full two hours the tourist board suggests. There is no lighting, no staff and no phone box, and the ground is exactly the sort you do not want to cross in the dark.

• Read the panels in order rather than wandering. The three levels of text on each are pitched at different depths, and the sequence is what makes the castro-to-late-Roman shift readable on the ground.

• The finds are not at the site. More than two hundred pieces from Santomé, from pottery and brooches to coins and medical instruments, were shown by the Museo Arqueolóxico Provincial de Ourense in a dedicated exhibition covering the Iron Age to the 5th century AD. The museum’s main building is not currently in use; its exhibition programme runs from the Sala San Francisco on Rúa da Granxa, open Tuesday to Saturday 09:00 to 21:00 and Sunday 09:00 to 15:00, closed Mondays and public holidays, admission free. Check what is on before making the trip.

• Look down as well as up. Where the Loña cuts past the foot of the hill it has ground circular hollows into the bedrock, the marmitas de xigante, and they are part of why the site is protected as a natural as well as an archaeological one.