Matosinhos

The municipality of Matosinhos belongs to the Province of Douro Litoral and the district of Porto and is located on the banks of the River Leça about 8 km from the center of Porto. It belongs to the Porto Metropolitan Area (corresponds to about 8% of that area) together with Vila Nova de Gaia, Maia and Gondomar, among others. Administratively, Matosinhos is divided into 10 parishes such as: Matosinhos, Senhora da Hora, Leça do Balio, S. Mamede Infesta, Custóias, Guifões, Leça da Palmeira, Perafita, Santa Cruz do Bispo and Lavra. In 2006 this municipality had about 170 000 inhabitants. The settlement of Matosinhos predates the foundation of Portuguese nationality, since it already existed in the year 900, being called Matesinus. The village of Matosinhos, formed by the parishes of Matosinhos and Leça, was created in 1853 and was elevated to a city in 1984. In this territory there are various traces of human action throughout the ages, the settlement of people in these lands started about 5000 years ago, during the Neolithic era, and until today our vestiges of the funerary monuments of that time have arrived. : the tapirs, whose most important nuclei would be located in Antela, Perafita, Guifões and S. Gens. At the end of the Bronze Age, a new type of habitat will expand - the castros, associated with a culture of its own characteristics that will last throughout the Iron Age. Even today, there are significant vestiges of castros in the municipality, especially in Guifões, which is located on the left bank of the river Leça, on Monte Castêlo. Due to its location (close to the sea and on an elevation over the old Leça estuary) it will have been a village dedicated to the exploitation of coastal resources and commercial activity. This castro will have been abandoned around the 4th / 5th century AD. The arrival of the Romans, about 2000 years ago, will cause profound structural changes such as the opening of roads (such as the Cale-Bracara road) and the construction of bridges. The Leça estuary and the Lavra area were, in this context, the most romanized places, where there are traces of a villae and salt and garum production structures (paste resulting from the maceration of several species of fish and molluscs with wine, olive oil and other products). Mention should be made of the Roman Tanks of Angeiras and Villa do Fontão - these are examples of Roman industrial architecture, composed of six sets of tanks of rectangular and trapezoidal shape, excavated in the rocky outcrop and dispersed over about 600 meters on Angeiras beach. These tanks were used for salting fish or for the production of garum. Between the rear of the Parish Church of Lavra and the beach were found the remains of an important archaeological station that was the central nucleus of the settlement of this parish during Roman times - it is an old Roman villa, it has not yet been the target of systematic excavations. In the High Middle Ages this territory was marked by the now-disappeared Bouças Monastery, which was the reason for the development of the entire population that would lead the administrative division of Julgado de Bouças, which is at the base of the current municipality of Matosinhos. Another important medieval monument is the Monastery of Leça do Balio which resulted from the expansion of an old building and which would become the original headquarters of the Knights Hospitalier of the Order of Malta. Its origin dates back to the 10th century, in an architecture of transition from Romanesque to Gothic style.