Lugo

Lugo is a city in Galicia in northwest Spain, encircled by intact Roman walls, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's a popular start point for pilgrims on one of the trails to Santiago de Compostela. In 2024 its population was almost 100,000 and growing, bucking the trend of depopulation elsewhere in Galicia. Gold! That's what lit up Roman eyes, and it didn't take long to wrest control of this area from the native Iberoceltic people. Gold ores stretched through the mountains to the east, and were washed out by early forms of "Placer-mining". There's no sign of this nowadays in Lugo (see Ponferrada for the landscape it created), but what did endure was a substantial city encircled by stout walls, erected 263-276 AD. Those walls sufficed for defence while the Roman military empire remained strong, but that crumbled from the 4th century AD, and outlying cities such as Lugo fell to Celts and Visigoths. The Moors invaded Spain in the 8th century and swiftly captured all except northern parts held by the Visigoths, and Galicia like Castile and León became a depopulated borderland. When the Moors were rolled back in later centuries, there was a determined effort to re-populate and re-christianise these areas, with a flurry of church-building in Romanesque style. By the late Middle Ages the pilgrimage trail to Santiago was well-established, and Lugo stood on one of the routes, Camino Primitivo from Oviedo. They sought to boost their revenue by the permanent display of the "host" - the communion bread that supposedly is literally the body of Jesus while retaining its standard appearance. It's displayed in an elaborate "monstrance" on the cathedral main altar. Spain briefly grew rich in the early modern period from gold, silver, slavery and other commerce with the Americas, but little of this wealth reached Lugo, nor did industrialisation. In 1809 the British fought a rearguard action here as Napoleon chased them all the way to Corunna on the coast. By that era, cannons could blast down walls while mortars could lob destruction over them, and many cities removed this obsolete form of defence in order to open up their streets and expand their conurbation. De-populated Lugo had simply no need, so theirs stood. It became a provincial capital in 1883 and the railway arrived in 1875. Present-day Lugo mostly makes its living from admin, services, education (it has a campus of the University of Santiago), pilgrimage-related tourism, and those walls. The Galician language (not merely a dialect) resembles Portuguese and is the official language for place-names. Castilian Spanish (the version most foreigners learn) is also widely used. Oficina Municipal de Turismo is on Praza do Campo 50 m north of the cathedral, open daily 10:00-18:00. This is the place to get your pilgrimage credentials signed off.

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Lugo is the starting point of The Way of Saint James from Lugo: the last 100km and it’s a stopover point on From Oviedo to Santiago through the Hospitales route, From Oviedo to Santiago: 16 days on the Route of Pola and From Oviedo to Santiago: 11 days on the Route of Pola. You can reach Santiago de Compostela in 6 days.