Pontevedra Old Town arcaded plaza
— a granite arcade kept for footsteps.
Not only on a wall.
Pontevedra Old Town arcaded plaza, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The old quarter of Pontevedra is a knot of granite arcades and small stone squares, the largest of them Praza da Ferrería with its row of camellias and an eighteenth-century fountain. The city closed the historic centre to cars in 1999; the porticoes were given back to walking and rain shelter. The Camino Portugués passes through on the way north to Santiago de Compostela, about 60 kilometres further on. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Pontevedra is the capital of its Galician province, set at the head of the Ría de Pontevedra where the Lérez river meets the sea. The historic centre is one of the largest preserved old towns in Galicia, built mostly between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries from local grey granite. Praza da Ferrería is the principal plaza, flanked on its south side by a granite arcade and the Gothic church of San Francisco. The city sits about 20 metres above sea level.
The buildings around the squares are almost entirely Galician granite, quarried in the surrounding hills and laid in heavy ashlar courses. The arcades along Praza da Ferrería and Praza da Leña carry the upper stories on squat round columns over flagged stone walks, sheltering walkers from the heavy Atlantic rain. The eighteenth-century Fonte da Ferrería, a four-spouted granite fountain, stands at the southern end. Most facades are whitewashed above the first floor; the ground level is left as bare stone.
The historic centre has been closed to private cars since 1999, a long-running pedestrianisation programme begun under Mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores. The city won the UN Habitat Dubai International Award in 2014 and the Intermodes urban-mobility prize in 2013 for the work. Pontevedra lies on the Portuguese Way of the Camino de Santiago, about 60 kilometres south of Santiago de Compostela. Trains and buses reach the city from Vigo, Santiago, and A Coruña.
