The Senhora da Mó hill rises to the altitude of 711 meters, 8 km from Arouca. It was erected in this place a beauty simple chapel of unconventional outlines regarding region’s context, which is presumed to be from the sixteenth century, dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Mó (Our Lady of Millstone), considered the protector of crops and animals. From this place, filled with mystical meaning, one can see the mountains of Freita (in front), and the valley of the Arda river (far right) and the valley of the Moldes stream (slightly left). These valleys have the particularity of constituting granite alveoli, very interesting geological structures characterized by forming a flattened depression, surrounded by elevations, and a strangulation downstream, originating a concave surface. These formations are very amenable to agricultural use, which justifies the ancestral human occupation of these territories. Here one can see in the distance the Arouca monastery, built in the tenth century by a couple of Visigoths, Loderigo and Vândiloe, which had great power in the Middle Ages. Result of various works of reconstruction and expansion of the monastery, the current building dates from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
