Montalegre, capital of Terras de Barroso for 734 years, is located in the northernmost fold of the barrosão plateau. In effect, he assumed this privilege, on June 9, 1 273, by letter granted by King D. Afonso III. This monarch erected, for his safety and that of the whole land of Barroso, the admirable mediévica fortress, circumnavigating it from walls, where millennia before our most remote ancestors had built his oppidum (castro).