7 days in Matosinhos & Leca da Palmeira Itinerary

Matosinhos is a city and a municipality in the northern Porto district of Portugal, bordered in the south by the city of Porto. The population in 2011 was 175,478, and covered an area of approximately 62.42km2. The urban centre, the city proper, had a population of 45,703 in 2001.HistoryThe oldest vestige of human settlement in this territory extend back thousands of years and include instruments and Paleolithic artefacts, collected along the old beaches . The settlement of the land began sometime 5000 years ago, during the Neolithic, as evidenced from various funeral monuments and dolmens sporadically situated in Lavra, Perafita, Leça do Balio, Santa Cruz do Bispo, Guifões and São Gens.At the end of the Bronze Age, much like most of the northwest peninsula, settlements expanded into proto-urban agglomerations at high altitudes, associated with a culture with specific characteristics that predominated until the 1st century. Until today there still exist vestiges of castros dotting the landscapes, such as the assets collected from the Castro of Monte Castelo in Guifões. The natural conditions and navigability of the Leça River estuary assisted maritime transport, that depended on the transport of a diverse flow of merchandise from throughout Imperial Roman. Here, the products were offloaded and redistributed to other sites within the region.