The Shell Chapel and a Walk Around A Toxa Island

The Shell Chapel (capilla de las Conchas) is the image of A Toxa: a small church with walls completely lined with scallop shells, in a garden beside the bridge that links the island to O Grove. You can see it in ten minutes, but it deserves a good hour if you add the walk around the island, the former spa and the story of the donkey who, according to legend, discovered the hot springs. Everything is flat, free and done on foot.

Why it is covered in scallop shells

The chapel of San Caralampio was designed by the Ourense architect Daniel Vázquez-Gulías and opened on 28 June 1909, without shells. The altar façade faces south and the rain battered it, with damp that wouldn't go away. In the late 1940s, the Marquis of Riestra, manager of the spa, called in a bricklayer from O Grove, Anselmo Millán, who proposed a traditional solution: overlapping scallop shells so the water would slide off without getting in. The Marquis liked the result so much that he had the whole chapel covered. The work took years and finished in the early fifties. The garden it stands in was once a salt pan, filled in at the beginning of the 20th century.

The walk around the island

Beside the chapel, a bronze sculpture recalls the legend collected by Emilia Pardo Bazán in 1899: a priest from O Grove left his donkey, ill with a skin complaint, on the island and, on returning, found it cured, rolling in the mud. In an enclosure at the entrance to the island live some donkeys that recall the story, which children like a lot. A few steps away is the shop-museum of La Toja salts and soaps, the brand of black soap made since 1905.

The stone building of the old spa, from 1928, has been closed since a fire in 1987; beneath it is A Burga, the hottest thermal well on the island. On the rest of the island there is woodland, a golf course, a casino and three hotels. In the woods, the Mancomunidade do Salnés also points out the Aldea dos Grobits, another draw for those with children.

Getting there and parking

A Toxa is joined to O Grove by a bridge from the early 20th century, reached on foot or by car from the centre of O Grove. The chapel is next to the island's entrance, near the Gran Hotel. To round off the visit, the A Toxa thermal club is open to the public at the spa's two hotels, with a reservation.