Pedrógão Pequeno Tour, Sertã, Portugal

Pedrógão Pequeno, Sertã
Jewel of Beira Baixa. A white village, made of granite, in the sea of brown shale that surrounds it. Next to Zêzere, in the center of the Schist Villages Network, with everything at hand.
Old Town, next to the left bank of the Zêzere, on the edge of the IC8, is a few kilometers from Pedrógão Grande and the Cabril Dam. Among its heritage, the main church and the Philippine Bridge over the Zêzere stand out. In schist lands there is a Pedrógão – granite outcrop – which provided stone for the stonework of doors and windows, although schist is the predominant construction material.

In Pedrógão Pequeno, the shale is hidden under white plaster. When the philharmonic band comes to play, the streets fill up and memories come to mind of the 1950s, a time when the workers who built the Cabril Dam arrived in the village. To discover the view from the top of Monte da Senhora da Confiança and the old road that, over an old Philippine bridge, takes us to Zêzere. You must try the fish soup.

Proud seat of the parish of the municipality of Sertã, Castelo Branco District, Pedrógão Pequeno extends over 4,275 hectares on the left bank of the Zêzere, at the end of the province of Beira Baixa, close to the place where the Cabril Dam wall was built. The village took advantage of the location of a prominent, but not very steep, granite hill and took advantage of the proximity of the Zêzere, dominating the section crossing the river. The village is surrounded by flat agricultural land with deep soil and plenty of water.

Over the centuries, the settlement left the primitive option for Monte da Srª da Confiança, settling and developing along the old road that crosses the village to access the Cabril bridge. This is clear from the alignment of the urban fabric and the location of the oldest houses still existing in the village. At the beginning of the 1940s, Orlando Ribeiro and Sant’Anna Dionísio described Pedrógão Pequeno: “… humble village, former council headquarters, with unplastered granite houses, sit. on a plateau surrounded by dense curtains of trees, two steps away from the deep gorge cut by the obstinate waters of the Zêzere.” (“Guide to Portugal - Beira Litoral, Beira Baixa, Beira Alta”, 1944)

The predominant construction material is granite, but it was only from the 1950s/1960s that the facades began to be almost completely plastered and whitewashed, creating this “white village”. The granite only remains visible in the openings (jambs, lintels and thresholds).

Surrounded by rich forests and high rocks cut by water lines and luxuriant vegetation, Pedrógão Pequeno is located in an extensive schist area in the center of the country, overlooking the deep valley of the Zêzere river. However, it includes part of a small granite outcrop embedded in the banks of the river and which extends to Pedrógão Grande.

To characterize the territory, we will use an article by Prof. Orlando Ribeiro: “Heads and slopes became moorland, in which, due to the selection of edible species by cattle, rockrose predominates with its odorous resin in hot weather and, in spring, large white flowers, of intense but ephemeral beauty. At the beginning of this century, on the initiative of the peasants and before State intervention confiscated their wastelands, the pine forest came to cover these wild lands, until then frequented by goatherds and charcoal burners. Today it drowns the cultivated areas to such an extent that the settlement has taken on the deceptive appearance of being the result of recent land clearings.”

in Aldeias do Xisto
https://www.aldeiasdoxisto.pt/pt/aldeias/zezere/pedrogao-pequeno/