Citania de Santa Luzia

Iron Age Town near from Viana do Castelo

The  Santa Lucia Citania  in  Viana do Castelo  is a magnificent example of peninsular Northwest fortified settlement.
This  fort  is located on top of Mount  St. Luzia in  Viana do Castelo , being a fortified settlement protonic-urban type, with a continuous occupation between periods of the Iron Age and the  romanization .

Its strategic location is ideal, as it has a wide angle of visibility around the estuary of the river  Lima and the coastal area of the  Atlantic , allowing optimal conditions of defense and control of roads, valleys and shipping and river.

This site also known as Cidade Velha de Santa Luzia , is quoted in the literature at least since the seventeenth century. 

Of the total area is just discovered by a third party and is also destroyed a significant part of the village when it built the Pousada de Santa Lucia and access roads.

Recognized residential structures are organized in most quarters, demarcated by dividing walls and defined flow paths, some covered by slabs.

Most of the rooms shown are circular, with or without foyer, elliptical and rectangular. The doorways are generally oriented southwest, coinciding with the general slope of the ground so that protects rainwater inputs and northerly winds.

The most common area of ​​the floor of the rooms is the natural rock.

St. Lucia has three lines of walls served by a covered way, reinforced by strong towers and trenches to ensure the defense of enclosure. Access to the walls was done by a staircase still has this on the inside of the wall.

Like a large number of Castros in this geographic area also St. Lucia clearly records traces of occupation in Roman times especially evident in the existence of some rectangular rooms, more spacious and airy, and the emergence of new slums, well as the opening track and perpendicular streets that offers a new rationality of the village spatial planning.