Amarante Municipality (Portugal)

Last modified: 2001-08-16 by antonio martins
Keywords: amarante | coat of arms | lion | waves (white): 2 | bridge: 3 arches |
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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 Águeda. 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 Tâmega, 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