Pontedeume's Medieval Stone Bridge by Night: Photograph and Interpretation

Night has settled on Pontedeume. The houses climb the hill in tiers of white, cream and red roofs, a church tower rises above them, and along the waterfront the street lamps are already lit. In front of the town, the old stone bridge runs out across the Eume on its low arches, every lamp on it doubled in the dark water of the estuary. This first image is an interpretation, painted in loose watercolour washes; the photograph it grew from, taken from across the river, appears further down.

Pontedeume and Its Bridge, Galicia: a watercolour interpretation of the photograph shown below. Sapiens Verbum.

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Quick facts
Photographer: Sapiens Verbum
Subject: The town of Pontedeume and its medieval stone bridge over the Eume estuary at night
Location: Pontedeume, A Coruña, Galicia, Spain
Medium: Colour photograph and a watercolour interpretation of the same frame
Series: Pontedeume

The watercolour keeps everything the camera saw and changes how it is told. The hillside of trees becomes a band of blotted greens and blues, the sky dissolves into the cream of the paper, and the edges of the picture are left ragged and splashed, the way a painter leaves a sheet when the light is going and there is no time to tidy. The lamps on the bridge and along the quay turn into dabs of orange that run straight down into the water. It is the same town and the same hour, seen with a warmer eye.

A bridge that gave the town its name

Pontedeume means, quite simply, "the bridge on the Eume". A crossing stood here long before the town was given its charter by Alfonso X in 1270, and the bridge was rebuilt in stone between 1380 and 1386 by Fernán Pérez de Andrade, the powerful lord of these lands. In its day it was one of the longest bridges in Galicia, running for some 850 metres on dozens of pointed arches. It also carried two towers, a hospital for pilgrims with its own chapel, and stone figures of a bear and a boar, the emblems of the Andrade family.

Floods and repairs have changed it many times since. By the middle of the nineteenth century the towers, the chapel and the Andrade beasts had gone, and much of the bridge was rebuilt. What crosses the estuary today, the line of arches you see lit in both images, still follows the medieval route into the old town, where the square tower of the Andrade family, the Torreón, still stands.

Where the Eume meets the sea

Pontedeume sits where the river Eume widens into the Ría de Ares, on the Atlantic coast of A Coruña. Upstream, the river runs out of the Fragas do Eume, one of the best-preserved Atlantic coastal forests in Europe, with the medieval monastery of Caaveiro hidden in its woods. Downstream, the estuary opens towards Ares and Redes and the open sea. The town itself is a fishing and market town of narrow streets that climb steeply from the quay, and the English Way of the Camino de Santiago passes through it, crossing this same bridge on the way to Betanzos.

The photograph behind it

This is the frame as the camera recorded it, in the last of the evening light. The sky has already gone dark, the trees on the hill are almost black, and the town is lit from within: windows, shopfronts and the street lamps along the waterfront. The water of the estuary is calm, so the reflections of the bridge lamps fall into the water as clean orange lines. The interpretation above keeps the same town, bridge, boats and reflections, and changes the sky, the colour and the touch.

Medieval Fishing Town of Pontedeume with Its Stone Bridge by Night, A Coruña. The original photograph. Sapiens Verbum.

See more of the Ría in motion

Our travel channel has filmed the roads and waters around Pontedeume:

• A drive through Ares, Mugardos, Cabanas, Pontedeume and Fene in 4K (94 min)
• The port of Redes on the Ría de Ares: a time-lapse (1 min)
• Sunset over the Ría de Ferrol: a 4K time-lapse (1 min)

For the same town from the hill opposite, see Pontedeume from Cabria, Nogueirosa, and for daily life on the quay, fishermen repairing nets in Pontedeume. Upriver, the Eume runs below the monastery of Caaveiro.

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See the watercolour of Pontedeume framed on your wall. Both versions of this frame are available as museum-quality prints, canvas or posters, and the interpretation can also be licensed for your own project.
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See the bridge of Pontedeume on Google Maps

Part of the Pontedeume series.