2.5 euro – Côa Valley Archeological Site

The Côa Valley is considered one of the most important sites of rock art in the world, and it is the most important outdoor site with Paleolithic rock art. Here, fifty concentrations of art have been identified, along the last 17 kilometres of the River Côa, as far as its confluence with the Douro. These concentrations represent engravings that mostly date from the Upper Paleolithic (more than 10,000 years ago), but the valley has also kept examples of paintings and engravings from the Neolithic and Calcolithic, engravings from the Iron Age and from the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Côa art was classified as World Heritage in 1998 by UNESCO. This coin has been designed by António Marinho, and has on its obverse a broad representation of a part of the representative set of engravings from Rock 1, situated in Canada do Inferno. In the centre of this side is the national coat of arms and the face value. On the reverse, the figures drawn on the obverse are reconstructed in a more complete form. In the centre is the symbol of World Heritage and the identification of the coin, "Côa Valley Archeological Site".