page_title: History of Póvoa de Varzim
section_title: Castro culture urbanization and maritime trade 900–138 B.C.
hierarchical_section_title: History of Póvoa de Varzim / Castro culture urbanization and maritime trade 900–138 B.C.
caption_attribution_description: English: Central street, Cividade de Terroso
context_page_description: The history of Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal, and its development as a maritime trade and fishing hub, have been greatly influenced by its location at the entrance to one of Portugal's best natural ports.
  Permanent settlement in the coastal plain of Póvoa de Varzim dates back to around four to six thousand years ago; around 900 BC, unrest in the region led to the establishment of a fortified city. The ocean has played an important part in its popular culture and economy, through maritime trade and fishing, leading it to establish a fiefdom in the 10th or 11th century, a municipality in 1308 and to become, in the 18th century, the main fishing port in northern Portugal.
  Póvoa de Varzim and its region had relevant input that allowed the Portuguese discoveries, throw manpower, shipbuilding and seafaring knowledge. Since the 18th century, its beaches have helped it become one of the main tourist areas of the region, which prompted high-culture development since the late 18th century. Its development suffered setbacks due to feudalism, monastic domain, border disputes and, recently, the development of a highly centralized state.
context_section_description: Widespread pillaging by rival tribes led the resident populations of the coastal plain of Póvoa de Varzim to raise a fortified town atop the hill that stood next to the sea. The city area covered 12,000 m² (3.0 acres) and had several hundred inhabitants. The City prospered due to its strong defensive walls and its location near the ocean, which facilitated trade with the maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea, especially during the Carthaginian dominion of the southern Iberian Peninsula.
  The city had some urbanization stages: during the first centuries, the small habitations were constructed with adobe mixed with vegetable additive. The first constructions made out of rock started to appear in the 5th century B.C., due to iron peaks technology that appeared in Asia Minor, brought to the Iberian Peninsula by Phoenician settlers in the Atlantic Coast during the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.
  The visits of Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had as porpoise the exchange of textiles and wine for gold and tin, despite the scarcity of terrestrial ways, this was not a problem for Cividade de Terroso that was strategically located next to the sea and by the Ave River, thus an extensive trade existed in the city. The external commerce, dominated by tin, was complemented with domestic trade in tribal markets between the different cities and villages of the Castro culture, they exchanged textiles, metals (gold, copper, tin and lead) and handicrafts including exotic products, such as glass or exotic ceramics, brought from trading with the peoples of the Mediterranean or other areas of the Peninsula.
  The population worked in agriculture, fishing, gathering, shepherding and worked metals, textiles and ceramics. Cultural influences arrived from inland Iberian Peninsula, beyond the ones proceeding from the Mediterranean through trade.
  In the area of the modern city, ceramics surfaced during a highway construction in 1998 and walls were detected in 2002, the site may have been a Castro culture farmhouse.
caption: Preserved Decumanus street. The first granite buildings appeared in the 5th century B.C. The city developed with new technology and trade brought in by the Mediterranean cultures.
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