Amarante Municipality (Portugal)

Last modified: 2001-08-16 by antonio martins
Keywords: amarante | coat of arms | lion | waves (white): 2 | bridge: 3 arches |
Links: FOTW homepage | search | disclaimer and copyright | write us | mirrors

• About the flag
• Version without the coat of arms
• Presentation of Amarante

• Municipalities of Portugal
• Portugal

The flag of Amarante is a gyronny of white over green with coat of arms in the centre. The coat of arms is, in my humble opinion, one of the best-looking portuguese municipal coats of arms: It has the unavoidable mural crown (5-towered), a shield, the collar of the Order of Tower and Sword and an atypical scroll similar to the one of �gueda. The shield is red with a white heraldic lion (holding a pack of 3 arrows tied with a golden ribbon) over a silver bridge, in turn over 5 white and blue wavy stripes.
Jorge Candeias, 05 Aug 1998

As for it's meaning, the wavy lines and the bridge refer to the river T�mega, but the lion is mysterious to me. It must have some meaning, though, because this kind of creature is not frequent in portuguese municipal heraldry (or other, I suppose).
Jorge Candeias, 05 Aug 1998

A white and green gyronny.
Jorge Candeias, 15 Jul 1999

Amarante is a city that belongs to the Porto district (Oporto), old Douro Litoral province, future region of Entre Douro e Minho. The municipality has 299,3 sq. km of area and nearly 58 900 inhabitants distributed amongst 40 communes (nearly 1% of the portuguese communes are in this municipality!). I don't know much about this place's economy, but I suppose it's mostly rural with some industry and services. It's economical indicators (low) seem to show this.
Jorge Candeias, 05 Aug 1998