Located on the slopes of São Lourenço mountain, and facing the Paiva, the stone of the dishes is a rock with a set of 18 spirals and several lattices. These marks are part of the Galician-Portuguese Atlantic art, belonging to a period between Chalco lithic and Bronze Age, that is, between the years 4000 and 3000 B.C. Spirals were used by many cultures in various inscriptions, in different historical periods, and are almost always associated with a strong mysticism, the connection to nature and its phenomena, like the sun or the movement of the stars, or even representing reincarnation. So this was possibly a space with great magical-religious significance.
From here, you can admire the mountain of São Lourenço standing out in the landscape, while an isolated portion of the Montemuro massive. Geologically, this small mountain presents a remarkable diversity, from the impressive quartz ridge of São Lourenço, to the conglomerates of the Carboniferous period when were formed the large coal deposits, about 300 million years ago. Either by its geological composition, or by its geographical location – making the boundary between the hydrographic basins of the Douro and Vouga – the mountain of São Lourenço presents an important biodiversity, like the pygmy daffodil as an important endemism of Atlantic influence that arises in the quartz ridges and, occasionally, in the northern mountains of the Iberian Peninsula. Here coexists with other species of more Mediterranean origin, as the strawberry tree or the holm oak. Regarding the fauna diversity, we can also observe several species such as the ocellated lizard, the fire salamander or the common toad.
