Protecting heritage is one of the aims of the Ferrol Metropolitan Foundation, the body that manages the city's presence in the European Art Nouveau Route. It is a combined publicly and privately owned institution created to develop projects in Ferrol's metropolitan area.

The city has a number of important Art Nouveau buildings located in the district of La Magdalena, a new homogeneous grid quarter that is a model of the urban planning systems of the 18th century. One architect, Rodolfo Ucha Piñeiro, left behind a remarkable series of Art Nouveau buildings between 1910 and 1925.

Their most outstanding feature is the façade design of residential buildings in which the architect adapted traditional galleries to more daring Art Nouveau forms that were mainly inspired by Belgian architectural models. These galleries are a typical design feature of buildings in the city and contain large overhanging balconies that occupy a major part of the façade.