Noia sits at the inland tip of the Ría de Muros e Noia, about 35 km southwest of Santiago de Compostela — close enough for a day trip, interesting enough to deserve longer. The town has a well-preserved medieval centre, a famous old church with an extraordinary graveyard, and the relaxed waterfront atmosphere of a Galician fishing town that also happens to have decent architecture.
The standout attraction is Santa María a Nova — a 14th-century Gothic church now used as a museum, its surrounding graveyard packed with tombstones carved with the tools of each buried person's trade: a cobbler's last, a tailor's scissors, a blacksmith's hammer. Nowhere else in Spain is anything quite like it preserved. The Church of San Martiño, with its carved Gothic portal, and the arcaded old town streets around it complete the picture. The fish market on the waterfront is most alive on weekday mornings.
Most Spanish visitors come in summer to escape the heat of the interior, and in August the population swells noticeably. But the old town is rewarding year-round: the covered arcades (soportales) keep the rain off, the market is good, and the surrounding coastline is green and dramatic in any season. Noia is a natural base for exploring the western shore of the ría; the nearby town of Muros is an easy bus ride along the coast.