Pazo O Rial

Our final night away was spent in this galician pazo. The word pazo has the same root as palace, or palacio in spanish, although it would more accuratley be described as a manor house. In this case restored as a hotel.

Interestingly at the time it was built, commencing 1696, there was a regulation in force that only one tower per town was permitted. To get around this the owner, the Marqués de Mariño, had it laid out so that the building straddled two municipalities, thus allowing him to have two towers, one at each end of the central part of the building.

It had it's own chapel building, connected by stairs to the left tower, and also a sizable horreo grain store, build of granite in typical Galician style, very different from the traditional wooden horreo and panero grainstores of neighbouring Asturias.