Penascosa

Penascosa is one of the most celebrated rock art sites in the Côa Valley and the most visited in the Archaeological Park, distinguished by the density of engraved rocks, the visibility of pecked motifs, and the serene beauty of the location. It lies on a broad river beach on the right bank of the Côa River, in the municipality of Vila Nova de Foz Côa, within the parishes of Castelo Melhor and Almendra, in the Guarda district. Visits to this ensemble, part of the largest known open-air Paleolithic art complex in Europe, are organised from the village of Castelo Melhor.

A sanctuary on the banks of the Côa

The engravings at Penascosa are part of the major discovery of the Côa Valley, publicly announced in 1994, which led to the abandonment of the planned dam on the river and the creation of the archaeological park. As at the nearby Canada do Inferno, the schist at Penascosa was worked by Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherer communities between approximately twenty-two thousand and ten thousand years before our era, spanning all phases of the valley’s art, from the late Gravettian to the Magdalenian.

The choice of a rock by the water, facing the passage of animals, suggests these panels were not casual drawings but deliberate locations — an open-air sanctuary revisited over millennia.

The site’s location on a pebble beach at the bottom of a river meander was likely decisive: it was a crossing point and watering hole for the fauna hunted by these groups, which they chose to depict in stone.

The engravings

The repertoire at Penascosa is dominated by the large herbivores characteristic of the Paleolithic rock art of the Côa — horses, aurochs, deer, and ibex — with the occasional addition of a fish. The figures were primarily created by pecking, hammering the schist surface with a harder percussor, but also by abrasion and fine incised lines, techniques sometimes combined and superimposed on the same rock.

Some surfaces condense dozens of animals in palimpsests accumulated over time: a single rock may feature a pecked horse head alongside groups of scraped bovids superimposed upon it. Rocks 5 and 10 are among the largest panels in the park, and Penascosa also preserves famous examples of ‘graphic animation,’ where duplicated limbs or heads aim to suggest animal movement.

Significance and visiting

Penascosa brings together, in a setting of rare tranquillity, the finest of Côa Valley art, making it the preferred public gateway to the monumental ensemble of the Archaeological Park. The visit begins at the Castelo Melhor Reception Centre, continues in an off-road vehicle, and ends with a short walk along the riverbank, alongside other open sites such as Ribeira de Piscos.

The possibility of night visits, with grazing illumination, adds a unique dimension: it is under oblique light that the grooves in the schist gain relief and depth, restoring to the figures the legibility they had for those who engraved them over twenty thousand years ago by the flickering light of fire.