The road which linked Braga (Bracara Augusta) to Astorga (Asturica Augusta) through the A Limia, Valdeorras and El Bierzo depressions, was the Via Nova, which was built during the reign of the emperors Titus and Domician by the province legate C. Calpetanus Rantius Quirinalis Velerius Festus in 80 BC. This road appears in the Itinerarium Antonini, a document written during the reign of Diocletian in the late third century AD. However, there is not an unanimous opinion about this. The Via Nova is in the itinerary called Item alio itinere a Bracara Asturicam where the mansions and distances between Braga and Astorga are linked. The total distance was 218 miles long. Despite the multiple and varied changes of the Via Nova through the centuries, today most part of the transformed road structure of the original esplanade can be covered. On the other hand, the road surface and the paving have disappeared as it goes by both peneplain or valley lands and ascent stretches to mountain passes, because the walls that held up the platform felt down.
The historical and heritage importance of this road is based in two facts: the conservation of a great number of miliary stones and the conservation of five bridges, two of them in a good state of maintenance: Ponte Bibei and Pedriña. The rest -San Miguel, Navea and Cigarrosa- maintain important Roman remains.