Soure, Portugal

Soure, officially the Town of Soure, is a town and municipality of the Coimbra District, in Portugal. The population in 2011 was 19,245, in an area of 265.06 km². It includes a castle listed as a national monument.
The village of Paleão, located a few kilometers from the village of Soure, is one of the largest clusters of houses in the municipality, where the old cotton and linen factory is located.

WWW cm-soure.pt FB MunicipiodeSoure YT municipiosoure IG municipiodesoure

Parishes

Administratively, the municipality is divided into 10 civil parishes :

Alfarelos
Degracias e Pombalinho
Figueiró do Campo
Gesteira e Brunhós
Granja do Ulmeiro
Samuel
Soure
Tapeus
Vila Nova de Anços
Vinha da Rainha

Soure is one of the few territorially discontinuous municipalities in Portugal. The case of Soure is unique in the Portuguese context, as the discontinuity of the municipality is twofold and is due to the territorial discontinuity of two of its parishes: Degracias and Pombalinho, and Figueiró do Campo.
Degracias and Pombalinho parish has a small exclave embedded between the municipalities of Penela and Ansião.
Figueiró do Campo parish has an even smaller exclave, sandwiched between two parishes in the municipality of Montemor-o-Velho, effectively creating a small enclave in this municipality in the district of Coimbra.

Geography

The municipality is bound to the north by the municipality of Montemor-o-Velho, to the northeast by Condeixa-a-Nova, to the east by Penela, to the southeast by Ansião, to the south by Pombal and to the west by Figueira da Foz.

Population

According to data of National Institute of Statistics, in 2021 the district of Coimbra recorded a population decrease of around 5.0% compared to the results of the 2011 census. In the municipality of Soure, the decrease was around 10.3%.

	1900	1911	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1981	1991	2001	2011	2021
0-14 years	6 758	7 544	6 520	7 169	7 187	6 777	6 687	4 660	4 672	3 479	2 519	2 258	1 761
15-24 years	3 427	4 043	4 338	4 008	4 195	4 492	3 949	3 210	3 190	3 001	2 663	1 671	1 495
25-64 years	8 761	9 300	9 522	10 354	11 162	12 292	13 134	11 215	10 868	10 883	10 530	9 930	8 227
≥ 65 years	1 198	1 419	1 374	1 852	2 059	2 276	2 805	2 940	3 840	4 341	5 228	5 386	5 778

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Transport

Railway

Linha do Norte has four stations in the Soure municipality :

Simoes
Soure
Vila Nova de Anços
Alfarelos

According to 2023 data, Soure station is served by C.P. regional passenger trains, typically with eleven trains per day in the Coimbra direction and twelve in the Entroncamento direction.
Alfarelos railway station, originally called Alfarellos, is a railway station located in the parish of Granja do Ulmeiro. As a junction point for the Alfarelos branch on the Northern Line, it is an important station for rail service connections between Coimbra, Figueira da Foz, Porto, and Lisbon. As of 2023, Alfarelos is served by several types of C.P. passenger trains:

Commuter train on the Coimbra-Figueira service, typically with 16 trains per day in each direction, some with extended stops at this station;
Regional train, between Coimbra and Lisbon - Santa Apolónia or Entroncamento, typically with 13 daily circulations in each direction.
Inter-regional train, between Coimbra-B and Caldas da Rainha, typically with two trains per week in each direction.

Montemor railway station, which is on the Alfarelos branch and nominally serves the town of Montemor-o-Velho, is located in the Alfarelos parish. It is served by Coimbra-Figueira commuter trains infrequently.

Road

A1 motorway passes through Soure municipality and has one exit located southeast of the Paleão village.

Number of the exit	Km from Lisbon; Porto	Exit road
10A	169; 134	N 348

Religious sites

There are several Roman Catholic churches in the Soure municipality.