We had a wonderful week in Pontevedra, visiting churches, rivers, squares, gardens, but it was time to move on, and drive from Pontevedra to Santiago de Compostela. On the way we planned to visit the Paza de Oca because I had read about its beautiful garden.
Read more: Pontevedra to Santiago de CompostelaHeading north
It was ver grey and wet as we set off, but we decided to stick to the plan and visit the garden I had read about.
Pazo de Oca
It was drizzling, but we took umbrellas and set off to explore the site. Operating the ‘proper’ camera and an umbrella was going to be challenging! The Pazo de Oca has a long a complicated history, detailed on its website. However, the transformation and creation of the gardens dates from the early 1700s when Constanza Arias Azores married the Count. She was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and brought ideas about courtly life, and a considerable fortune.
“The Pazo de Oca belongs to the Casa Ducal de Medinaceli Foundation and is part of the Camelia Route, a tour from north to south of Galicia through twelve pazos and gardens, public and private, with about 8,000 varieties of camellias in gardens linked to the historical heritage of Galicia.”1
The gardens were laid out in the second half of the 18th century and are a pastiche of gardening ideas in France and Italy at that time, with perhaps English influences as well.
The Pazo is the square building around a courtyard on the left of the plan above, and you walk through a door in the wall to enter the main garden. The five small, square ‘gardens’ are lined with box hedges, immaculately pruned.
Just beyond the five small squares is a wash house and this party was having great fun. The ladies were playing ‘washing’ and singing appropriate folk songs!
From the washhouse you can walk through a little woodland area, created in the 19th century, when the French gardener Francois Viet came to work in the garden. This leads to a long avenue of lime trees which leads to the end of the property, and into the woodlands beyond. To the left of the avenue, orchards rise up the hillside and in the misty drizzle it all looked quite magical – the camera loved it.
On the right hand side of the orchard there are formally laid out gardens where there were still some flowers.
And finally we made our way up towards the lakes in the middle of the garden. The 6th Count of Amarante ordered the lakes to be laid out in the 1720s. In the lakes are stone boats – one for fishing and the other for war.
The gardens in front of the Pazo
The gardens immediately in front of the building were rather less interesting.
Santiago de Compostela
After visiting this magical gardens the SatNav guided us to the Hotel Aranguaney in the centre of Santiago de Compostela and we parked in the underground car park of the hotel. After checking in and unpacking we felt we had to see the cathedral, which was only about ten minutes away.
Santiago was not as we had remembered! The Alameda park was packed with people getting ready to protest about the ‘Israeli Massacre’ in Gaza, and the two little roads leading up to the cathedral were packed with pilgrims, tourists, and possibly local people. We walked round for a while and then retreated to the hotel in shock.
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