Its origin goes back a long way: witness the many cave paintings in the surrounding area. In the Middle Ages its shipyards enjoyed great prestige, producing among others the caravel Santa María, Columbus' flagship on his first voyage to America. Pontevedra was always predominantly a seafaring town until the eighteenth century.

The historic part of this ancient walled city is listed as an Artistic-Historic Ensemble. Its streets and squares, still sporting the names of the guilds of yore, are packed with splendid ancestral homes and more modest houses of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, with galleries and arcades of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles.

One of Pontevedra’s most important sights is the Iglesia de Santa María la Mayor, built at the start of the fourteenth century. Defrayed by the sailor’s guild, this church is one of the gems of Galician art, blending Isabelline-Gothic, Manueline and Spanish Plateresque styles. On the tiny Plaza de las Cinco Calles, always a lively square, especially at night, stands a handsome set of eighteenth-century buildings. The Plaza del Teucro, called Praza do Teucro in the Galician tongue in honour of the city’s legendary founder, is Pontevedra’s main shopping area; it has many seigniorial houses of granite stone, such as the Palacio de los Gago y Montenegro or the Palacio del Conde de San Román.

Calle Soportales is also a busy shopping area; it leads into the Plaza Ferreira, a fetching square despite its size with some of the city’s most charming cafés; it is also the main meeting point for the city’s inhabitants. Here we can admire the Capilla de la Peregrina, an original chapel built in a transitional Baroque-Neoclassical style with a surprising curved main front. Its circular floor plan recalls a scallop shell (symbol of the pilgrim) and the fact is that the chapel lies right in the middle of the Portuguese pilgrimage route to Santiago. This chapel is adorned with the cherished image of the Virgen Peregrina, patron saint of the city.

Around this chapel and the Plaza Ferreira there is a cluster of cafeterias and pasty shops. Pontevedra prides itself on its pastry making tradition, producing roscon cakes, yemas (candied egg yolks) and typical almond tarts. Very close by is the Convento de San Francisco, in late Gothic style with a delicate rose window in the main front. There are important thirteenth-century tombs on both sides of the presbytery. The church, built from the thirteenth to fourteenth century, has a nave over 100 metres long.

One of the most enchanting squares of Pontevedra and the whole of Galicia is the Praza da Leña. On one side of it stands the Iglesia de San Bartolomé, sporting a Jesuit Baroque main front with colossal columns, and the Iglesia del Convento de Santa Clara, late Gothic in style. A good place for a stroll is La Alameda, an elongated tree-lined square with ruins of the Gothic Convento de Santo Domingo at one end, from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries.