/ PERAVELHA
“For a long time, the mountain was the home of primitive man, a relapsed vagabond with no roof other than the starry sky. There he lived for centuries among leafy oaks, chestnut trees that provided good shade and chestnuts, chronically hungry, but free.”
AQUILINO RIBEIRO, IN O HOMEM DA NAVE
Penedo da Fonte Santa
Main Church
Paiva River
HISTORY
Pêra, a variant of Pena, a semantic sister of Penedono, Penalva and other place names linked to large rocks; Peravelha took its name from the monumental stones in which it was born.
Its first inhabitants were lost in the obscurity of the Neolithic age, grew up at war with the gales and snows of winter; they breathed the air of free freshness on nights of full moon; the natural caves under the rocks were their first dwelling.
On the right bank of the Paiva River, stretches the flat and rough land of the “folha” (sheet) of Peravelha and on the relatively close horizon, on the gentle slope of the Serra da Nave, a wide strip of rocks and crags look like giant bones of a prehistoric civilization.