Vila Nova de Gaia: Encyclopedia - Vila Nova de Gaia

Vila Nova de Gaia

Vila Nova de Gaia (pron. IPA /'vi.lɐ 'nɔ.vɐ dɨ 'gaj.ɐ/) is a city and municipality of Portugal. It is located in the Porto district, south of the city of Porto on the other side of the river Douro. The municipality has a population of 288,058 (2001 census) and 24 parishes. Gaia is together with Porto in the commonly designated Porto Metropolitan Area.

It is also well known for its warehouses of Port wine, one of the most, if not the, most famous wine in the world.

Vila Nova de Gaia - Coat of Arms and Flag

The coat of arms are made up of a grey crest with two golden-yellow grapes on the bottom with a castle colored black in the middle with a person blowing the horn. The castle lies over the water. The castle is colored grey.

The flag is colored dark yellow to black in four each.

Vila Nova de Gaia - History of the Vila Nova de Gaia municipality

Vila Nova de Gaia already existed under the Roman Empire as the city of Cale. It developed most likely from a preexistent Celtic Castro, or neolithic settlement. The origin of the name Cale (or Gale, since in Classical Latin there was no clear distinction between the letters and sounds "g" or "c") is likely Celtic, from the root "Gall-" with which Celts refered to themselves, similarly to Galicia, Gaul or Galway. The river itself has a presumably Celtic name, Douro (Durus in Latin) maybe after Celtic "dwr", water. In Roman times the bulk of the population probably lived south of the river Douro, and on the north side, there was a smaller settlement around the deep water port which now is the Ribeira neighbourhood of Porto. The name of Porto, in high medieval times Portus Cale, thus stood for the harbour ("portus" in Latin) of the city of Cale. With the important trade of the river Douro, which is easily navigable up to the Régua deep inland, the Porto part of the city came to overgrow Cale, and became the most important part of town, where the Bisphoric and the merchants were established.

With the moorish invasions in the eighth century A.D., the de facto frontier between the Islamic state and the Christian one came to rest for a considerable period of time on the river Douro, around the year 1000. With the constant raids and counter-raids, the town of Cale, or Gaia, was deserted and most of its inhabitants took refuge in Porto.

After the conquest and pacification of the southern side of the Douro river after 1035, with the exodus or expulsion of the Muslim populations, leaving behind semi-abandoned fertile lands, colonists from the north settled in exchange for better feudal contracts with the newly appointed lords. These migrants refounded the old city of Cale or Gaia under the name of Vila Nova de Gaia (new town of Gaia) around the old castle and ruins of "old Gaia".

The name of the double city of Oporto and Gaia was frequently refered to in contemporary documents as "villa de Portucale", and the county of the Kingdom of Leon which was centered around it was named Portucalense. This county was eventually expanded and after gaining its independence, became the Kingdom of Portugal.

In June 30, 1989, Pedroso became a village On July 12, 2004, Crestuma, Lever, Olival, Perosinho, Sandim, São Félix da Marinha and Serzedo became cities.

Vila Nova de Gaia - Parishes

Here are 24 parishes of Vila Nova de Gaia:

The largest parish is Mafamude and the smallest is Sermonde. The largest parish is Pedroso and the smallest is São Pedro da Afurada. In terms of populational density, the most dense is Mafamude and the least dense is Sandim.

The economy are common in winery in the south bank of the Douro.

Categories: Cities in Portugal | Municipalities of Portugal

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Vila Nova de Gaia", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki