The village of Castro de Beiro, in the rural perimeter of Ourense, receives its name from an old pre-Roman settlement (castrum) on a promontory that would allow its inhabitants to have an advantageous position against attacks. On this promontory is the parish church of St. Andrew in Beiro, from which magnificent views of the surroundings can be seen. The temple falls within the so-called “classic” type of Galician Romanesque, from the early 13th century.
The gate of the main façade consists of a slightly pointed semicircular arch with checkered decoration. A tree and five birds are represented on a capital, while its opposite contains vegetal decoration. On the tympanum, despite not being complete, a part of a cross is still distinguished. On the gate the eaves are adorned with balls and supported by several corbels with vegetal motifs.
Both the southern and northern façades are arranged in a similar way: a gate with a pointed arch and a smooth tympanum. The cornice is supported by corbels adorned with geometric shapes.
The apse is centered by the semicircular window in whose capitals vegetal motifs are represented. Cornices are supported with geometric corbels and in the metopes there are variations of 4-petal flowers.
References:The city walls of Avila were built in the 11th century to protect the citizens from the Moors. They have been well maintained throughout the centuries and are now a major tourist attraction as well as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors can walk around about half of the length of the walls.
The layout of the city is an even quadrilateral with a perimeter of 2,516 m. Its walls, which consist in part of stones already used in earlier constructions, have an average thickness of 3 m. Access to the city is afforded by nine gates of different periods; twin 20 m high towers, linked by a semi-circular arch, flank the oldest ones, Puerta de San Vicente and Puerta del Alcázar.