Amarante Municipality (Portugal)

Concelho de Amarante, Distrito do Porto

Last modified: 2014-11-15 by klaus-michael schneider
Keywords: amarante | lion(silver) | bridge | waves | arrows(3) |
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• About the Flag
• Former Flag (1985)
• Version without coat of arms
• Presentation of Amarante

• Amarante Communes
• Portugal

• Page about Amarante at the Portuguese Municipalities’s Association website (incl. image of the arms)
  reported by António Martins, 18 Nov 2001

About the Flag

The flag of Amarante is a gyronny of white over green with coat of arms in the centre.
Jorge Candeias, 5 Aug 1998

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 reading "AMARANTE". 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 barrulets.
Jorge Candeias, 5 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, 5 Aug 1998

Former Flag (1985)

It is a fairly typical Portuguese municipal flag, with the coat of arms centred on a field quartered of green and white .
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 5 Nov 2014

Shield Gules, lion passant Argent above a 3-arched, embattled bridge Argent masoned Sable over a bar wavy Azure semy of wavelets Argent, in chief a bundle of three arrows Or, feathered Sable, tied Or and pointing downwards. Shield surrounded by chain of the military Order of Tower and Sword due to the town's loyalty and merits. Mural crown Argent with four visible towers (town rank) and white scroll reading in black capitals "AMARANTE".
This is one of the few examples, where non-trivial changes of the coat of arms have been made after upgrading to a city.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 5 Nov 2014

Former flag and arms adopted and published in Diário da República: I Série on 12 March 1985
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 5 Nov 2014

Version without the coat of arms

Presentation of Amarante

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 km² of area and nearly 58 900 inhabitants distributed amongst 26 communes. 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, 5 Aug 1998

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