Santa María a Nova and the guild tomb-slabs

Founded in 1327 by Archbishop Berenguel de Landoira of Santiago, whose image appears on the main façade tympanum in a scene of the Epiphany. The south doorway tympanum records the date of consecration.

The church is Galician seafarers’ Gothic: a single nave with a timber roof on three pointed arches that spring from short pilasters and divide the nave into four bays. The narrower, lower east end has a polychrome Baroque reredos of 1760 under a barrel vault; the 16th-century chapel of Pero Carneiro, on the Gospel side, has a shell-shaped vault.

Later additions include a 17th-century north sacristy, now a store and archive of slabs, and a 16th-century south sacristy used for display. Before leaving, see the 15th-century font, the tomb of Ioan de Estivadas (16th century) and the permanent exhibition of gravestones.

In the churchyard are a Gothic wayside cross to the south and the 16th-century baldachin of the Cristo do Humilladoiro to the north, sarcophagi around the church, and a unique collection of more than five hundred tomb-slabs from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Church and cemetery were declared a historic-artistic ensemble in 1973. Inside is the museum of guild sepulchral slabs.