Portomarin

Portomarin is a municipality in the province of Lugo, Galicia, situated on a promontory above the Embalse de Belesar, the reservoir created by the damming of the Miño river in 1962. The original village was submerged under the reservoir, and the entire town was relocated stone by stone to its current elevated position, with the most important buildings disassembled and reconstructed on the new site.

The Church of San Nicolás, a thirteenth-century Romanesque-Gothic fortified church, is the principal monument of the relocated town. Its massive walls with defensive crenellations and a large rose window above the portal give it a fortress-like appearance unlike any other pilgrim church on the Camino Frances.

The long modern bridge over the reservoir connecting the approach path to the town is one of the more dramatic entries on the entire route, the reservoir wide below and the town rising on its rocky promontory ahead.