O Facho

"O Facho" in Hio

In the western end of the Peninsula do Morrazo, individualized from the environment and elevated over the Ocean, Monte do Facho (Mount Facho) took in throughout centuries different expressions of the life in the region and therefore in the History of Galicia. In first place, from the Xth to the VIIth BC century, there was a settlement in the east slope, about which we don’t have any information apart from its exceptional size. In the VIth BC century arises the Galician Iron-Age settlement, fortified village that subsisted until the Ith BC century. From it, we can still see part of the walls, the moat, the stones that conformed the houses covering today the slopes of the mount, the rubbish dumps in the margins of the settlement or the present topography of the mount that derives so much from the construction of the settlement as from the natural configuration. Later, a sanctuary was built on the summit that gathered the old beliefs of those who had lived in the Iron-Age settlement to give them, throughout the IIth to IVth AD centuries, a new character, now marked by the process of assimilation of the Latin culture in this region of the Roman Empire called Gallaecia. Finally, in the XVIIIth century, a coastal guard post is constructed with military aims, from which the sentry box still survives.

The votive altars, ara in Latin, are the most significant findings of the excavations of Monte do Facho (Mount Facho). Its function was to offer up to God Berobreo a small monument containing in an inscription its condition of votive offering, the divinity to which it was dedicated and, sometimes, the name of the devout and/or the reasons for the offering. The examples of Monte do Facho state the interpretation that the Galician people made from the Roman original models. Beside few classic examples, we found the reformulation in the Galician environment, with variations in the morphology and ornamentation, until arriving in the last phases of the sanctuary to forms very different from the Roman models, a process expressing the creation of an aesthetic and symbolic Galician-Roman identity.

The sanctuary of Berobreo was put up in a sloping place surrounding the summit of the mount. There are some rests of columns indicating the existence of a building, but until now we only know an open-cast disposition of altars that, thrust into the ground and very numerous, covered a great part of that area. An accumulation that gave as a result a tendency in the monuments to be narrow and high, forming what at sight it would seem a "forest of altars". At the end of the existence of the sanctuary, the place was abandoned; the altars will fall and pile, sometimes broken, staying this way to the present time. sanctuary of Berobreo was built in a sloping place that surrounds the summit of the mount. There are rests of columns indicating the existence of a building, but until now we only know an open-cast disposition of altars that, thrusted in the ground and in great number, covered a great part of that area. An accumulation that gave as a result a tendency in the monuments to be narrow and high, forming what at sight it would seem a " forest of altars ". At the end of the existence of the sanctuary, the place vas abandoned; the altars will fall and pile, sometimes broken, staying this way to the present time.