Experience Some Living History - Visit Lugo

With regards to the entire Spanish tourist industry Northern Spain and Galicia especially have been very much a hidden treasure and hidden within lies a further particular treasure called Lugo.

Of all of the autonomous regions of Spain it is understandable given its location that Galicia is considered the most remote and therein lies the charm of Lugo hidden away longing to be discovered.

The traditional concept of Galicia was always that it was supposedly a poor agricultural region and as such the economy would not be the easiest to modernize yet one of the fasted growing sub sectors within the Galician Economy is tourism and it is this very real relationship with its historical past that give the region its particular appeal.

The cultural and language origins of Galicia are very much rooted within the Celtic family of communities found elsewhere in North West Europe and has led to Galicia always having a sense of looking outwards from their regional base as opposed to looking inwards towards the rest of Spain.

Because of its location and partisan traditions Galicia was always fairly inward looking having managed to survive throughout the centuries without ever really been conquered by anybody and this degree of fierce independence has lasted and developed down through the centuries.

In what has been a mountain to climb slowly but surely Galicia is now trying to manage successfully the twin track of its regional lifestyle with a much more modern society and thankfully this appears to have had very positive results with regards to tourism with little sign of negative effects..

The ancient town of Lugo is in eastern Galicia lays on one of the main roads into Galicia from Leon. It was not surprising given its location that the Romans chose to use it as their provincial regional capital.

As many historians have pointed out on quite a few occasions the Romans were a race that never did anything by half measures and so you can be rest assured that when they decided to use Lugo as their regional headquarters firstly they would make sure that it was fortified and secondly they would make sure that those fortifications were extremely robust and well constructed.

Hence you know have a town built in the 21st century that has some of the finest examples of Roman fortifications and architecture in existence today. So much so that the walls of Lugo are now major tourist attractions in their own right.

The Roman settlement at Lugo originates from about 15 BC but the actual fortifications were begun in earnest in the third century AD under the rule of the Roman emperor Augustus.

As has been mentioned before, the walls of Lugo surround the entire town and they are punctuated at regular intervals throughout the entire circumference by outposts of 82 different towers.

The other main attraction of Lugo is its Cathedral which now sits on the site of an earlier church construction that stems from the 12th Century. Perhaps not as large or impressive as its westernmost neighbour in Santiago de Compostela, the Cathedral at Lugo is still well worth a visit if you have the time.

Within the town walls the streets still follow a traditional roman axis and the narrow cobble stoned streets are a delight to wander around when you have the time and there are quite a few interesting restaurants that can be found in out of the way locations dotted throughout the town.

Scott James writes about a great many Internet Travel based issues and more on the above can be found at Accommodation in Galicia . For a more complete overlook at Tourism in Galicia try http://www.turgalicia.es