Su Nuraxi - a treasure

Ahhh! We have moved westward and northward into Sardinia, which means we have chosen to skip Sicily this year. It is much too hot to go further south now. We will do it another year. And a change of face, it is! The roads are almost level instead of vertical, the scenery is almost agricultural, instead of rock face, the roads are straight instead of winding, and the Nuraghi, while not so prevalent on the ground, have moved into the UNESCO Heritage Lists. And are utterly superb!

Today we visited Burimina's Su Nuraxi, which simply means, The Nuraghe, the sole UNESCO Site in Sardinia. We love UNESCO sites, and when we travel we try to hunt them down. Here, as ever, UNESCO has inscribed one of the most representative and interesting sites in all of Sardinia.

The other fascinating detail about this complex is that no one knew it was here for such a long time. Until 1949 it looked just like one of the surrounding conical shaped hills mounded in earthen topsoil and grass. Then, a local archaeologist, Giovanni Lilliu, who is still alive in Barumini, probed, poked, then uncovered it.

Su Nuraxi is a complex nuraghic site, but it didn't start out like that. About 1500 BC simpler nuraghe began to be extended. The main tower was raised with solid basalt and a top tier of lighter sandstone until it eventually stood as a three level nuraghe some twenty feet high. The solid stone tower looks much like a protective castle keep. Around it, four similar strong towers were added over time covering the north, south, east and west as further protection. Eventually a curtain wall between all the towers was raised in 1000BC. A secure village was starting to form.

The stone for these structures came from over 8kms away. They are huge heavy pieces. In the east we have seen whole mountain sides being carved clear away, massive slabs of stone sliced vertically from the cliff face just like marble, and trucks, crippled to a halt, carrying them, some burned out, right there on the road, in the middle of the process, so heavy was their load.

It is believed that the Nuraghic Sardinians used bullocks and drays to draw the stones down from much higher up in the hills. Such an amazing feat, such a monumental task, such a great effort. As more and more people moved closer to this show of strength, more buildings grew that tumbled down the hill: small circular interconnected igloo-type beehive bases were topped with a pitched wooden roof made of trunks and branches.

Throughout the island these huts were sometimes plastered with a stucco of clay, and cork from the local forests was sometimes used as insulation. There were hearths, grindstones, niches in the wall for food storage and large vases of water, buried in the floor, often with just the lip of the vase showing, covered with stone when not in use.

Su Nuraxi was a real community. It had a large public meeting hut, with stone seats around its circular perimeter, and a purifying basin set in a wall niche, used before meetings. Here all the important decisions would have been made about the functions and operations of the village and its people: here all the rules, laws, judgements and pronouncements would have originated.

Earlier at the Barumini archeological and ethnographic museum we had seen the finds that came from this site: stunning pottery, with such style and gracious lines, such care and quality, that you could imagine the dedicated village folk making it.

There is a feeling of awe that creeps into your soul when you are able to move in the spaces and walk over the same worn stones that Bronze Age folk in 1500 BC walked on. It makes for a kind of bonding. A wonderful site. We just loved it!

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Part of Su Nuraxi, excavated

Once  it was completely covered with earth and grass, like this 

Beehive shaped Nuraghic settlement, tumbling down the hill 

Amazing artifacts from the ruins

Almost perfect 

Elegant Nora

From Cagliari we headed to the west coast archeological site of Nora, now just a ruin of an ancient city port inhabited first by the Phoenicians who left few traces, it was thought, until one night at the end of last century, a wild storm uncovered a tophet in the sand not far from the church: a Phoenician - Punic cemetery for stillborn and premature babies, adorned with many pieces of burial pottery which helped age the site.

But, today, it is the Romans who have left the biggest mark in this lovely spot jutting out into the blue of the Mediterranean shaded by green date palms.  Ruins of a tiny city that at one time serviced eight thousand inhabitants tumble around a lovely headland which had two harbours: east and west. A perfect site for trade. And the dig finds at the well laid out museum in the neat and tidy modern town of Pula bear this out: oils and wines arrived in beautiful amphora and urns from different parts of the Mediterranean for hundreds upon hundreds of years.  

Archaeologists have only been working on the Nora site for about 60 years, and every year hundreds of university students from all over Italy and the world, spend much of their summer here at the dig. We talked with a group and their findings today included glass and some low status pottery objects: nothing grand so far.   

So much glass has been excavated around the temple area alone that some folk think that the entire temple might have been decorated with it. In such a blue reflective setting that would have been stunning to see. Some of the glass finds displayed in Pula show the finest of fine glass: rarely would you see glass spun so fine today. Amazing skill.  

The city's skeleton and rocky foundations are laid out all over the hill: the theatre, the shopping section, the apartment block equivalent to two modern stories high, crowded and probably a city slum.  

Not far away is the massive public bath house with its typical hot steam and frigid cold rooms; the wells, the public loos, the meeting places, the crossroads, along with the more prestigious homes of the very wealthy. And it is here where the most beautiful mosaics have yet been uncovered, laid out as they ever were in the bedroom, dining room and living room of an elegant patrician home with a privileged view overlooking the sea.

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A single sail out to sea from Nora site

Artifacts of beauty 

Artifact used in trade

The Nora dig site 

Blue glass may even have decorated the temple here

All have rooms with an amazing view

Decorative Roman  mosaic work on the floor

Grafitti urchins

The prime purpose of our visit to Cagliari was to see the Nuraghic section at the Archeology Museum in the Citadelle way at the top of the hill. And that, alone, was worth the winding trip. Sardinian museums are becoming a haven from the heat for us, but a joy to spend time in. They are beautifully laid out. The finds are astonishing, and there is often enough English to be able to decipher the whys and wherefores of most of the artifacts. And if there is not, there are books to be bought which help.

Cagliari is the capital of Sardinia. It has had a checkered history, with different invading bodies in control at various times. The Romans built the amphitheatre, the walkways, roads and warehouses. The Pisans built the wall around the high hill that tops the town along with two distinctive white defensive towers, setting up that section of town that today is called Castello: the Administrative area of the city. Not many of these features are in good repair. Many are scaly with age and dereliction, falling to bits, and blighted with grime while so doing.

Cagliara has a new set of invaders these days. They are the grafitti urchins: who take it upon themselves to litter practically every public and private building with mostly amateur and unsightly scribble and scroll. Tho', contrarily, I rather like this piece. Added to which Cagliara's old city is quite filthy, making it an unpleasant place to spend time in, dog poo, scraps, litter and graffiti are all too common. The roads surrounding the city are thick with gunk as well.

For a city whose residents reputedly earn more than any other place in Sardinia there seems little public spirit. Little effort made to present their city with a clean face. It is an old city. It is tired. It needs a face lift. But it, apparently, is not poor. I get that. Yet, how inexpensive is soap, water and a bit of elbow grease?

Graffiti everywhere, even in beauty spots

Ancient, perfect

Exquisite artifact 

Cagliari's old city, grubby and ill kept

Could be so charming 

If rocks were gold

Another downhill day to Cagliari, which I don't quite understand given that we started the day at sea level, did not appear to climb, ended the day at sea level, but in between managed yet another day driving what is becoming a regular rocky mountain twist, around mountains made of boulders. If the world ever needs rocks Sardinia has some to spare. And if the rocks ever become gold Sardinia will be rich.

One interesting feature of these downhill routes we keep taking is the frequency of springs piped down every mountain, running like an open tap from a piece of exposed metal pipe, or being funnelled into a well, some even with tiled backs, so that people, who think to drive up the massive mountain and then down again with empty containers in the trunks of their vehicles, might fill these up with crispy cold fresh free natural spring water. If they are game enough to park in the middle of the road whilst doing this, and trust to the congeniality of oncoming drivers not to zoom past too wildly. Which, really, is the only option. There are no shoulders on any east Sardinian roads. They are good enough roads, there is just no space to swerve off or pull out.

Another feature along these hillside routes is the placement, like Cobb and Co staging stops, of derelict double story buildings, which must once have operated on these routes like staging posts: filled with serviced rooms for accommodation and spaces to eat and drink. But now that vehicles have improved, distances have diminished, and routes take much less time, these old inns lie rotting. In another era they may be systematically dug out, dissected, their bits labelled and placed in a museum.

Our route to Cagliari was such a thrill ride that part way down we noticed great stacks of rubber tyres being used as protective bumpers against the sides of the mountain. Every so often, too, we noticed brooms being stacked behind guard rails. It wasn't until we were nearly to the bottom of the hill that we became aware that soon the road would be closed to drivers like us, and that volunteers wielding those brooms would be sweeping up misplaced rocks from raw shoulders as a contingent of young brash rev heads determined on hill climbing that dangerous narrow twisty route, at speed. I hope, while the mechanics were testing their brakes and bumpers at the beginning of the race the drivers were saying their prayers in preparation. Those Sardinian rocky mountain sides look so unforgiving: rubber tyre bumpers, or not.

And it is not like the roads lend themselves to speed. Even going slowly we find these hill routes so narrow that, on a regular basis, my rear vision mirror gets clipped by an oncoming truck. Three or four times so far this trip. It makes a dashed scary noise, too, as it flicks in and out. Luckily doing no damage. So far. Cross fingers. Amen.

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Derelict  inns everywhere

A hill climb about to start

Rocks in the mountains

Rocks on the beach

Lying on rocks

Water gouging rocks

Rocks from the land

Living in rocks 

Under a Spanish Tower

So many people and things have influenced Sardinian culture. We see it everyday. There are no campgrounds up in the high hinterland, so each night we descend to the coast to find a spot near the sea where campgrounds are established. At least for the months of July and August.

Our spot these last nights has been under a Spanish watchtower, Torre Salinas, on one side the Spiaggia, the fine gritty sand beach, on the other another infinity pool, so loved by Sardinian campsites. Just down the road are quiet little villages going about there business, as they ever do.

There are more little old ladies in black wandering the streets, and two large cemeteries where the marble vaults are heavily adorned with photos of those who have passed -- many, too, wearing black. A large number of older 'tradies' go about their business in Apes: tiny little utes not quite as big as Bec.

Our beach camp is along a dusty gravel road almost removed from their world. Planted all around our site are hundreds of Australian eucalyptus trees, used as the boundaries for each distinct campsite, planted in neat straight lines, in ways I have never seen straggly Aussie gums behave.

The trees, somehow, seem taller here: or we have been away too long and forget their height. There is no grass underfoot, and the dirt floor littered with fallen gum leaves is a picture postcard replica of many Aussie outback campgrounds. Including the bird song. There are hundreds of LBBs, little brown birds, making the prettiest songs. And it is just as hot so thank heaven for the sea and the pool.

In another few weeks, there will be more than just this few dozen of us fighting for shade from these gum trees, there will, in this camping section alone, be 1300 campers. That's the current number booked in for August. There may even be more. Mostly Sardinians, but a few German and Netherlander folk, too. Brits are rarely seen here, and Aussies almost never.

As well as that there are massive summer camping apartments, portable units, timeshare tents, a bar, a large restaurant, an entertainment stage for live performances, a market, laundries and many amenities' blocks.

On the beach there are rows of dozens of regimentally arrayed umbrella chairs, and a huge beach refreshment cabana, with rafia-decked umbrellas atop tables and chairs on the sand. This regimentality must be against Pete's religion: I had to urge him to take photos of all of this for posterity. It still astonishes me. All this infrastructure and expense for barely six weeks of full trade a year, and a few stragglers, like us, either side of that. How can it ever pay off?

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Dinner by the bay

Torre Salinas, the Spanish watchtower, guards the headland

Beautifully kept headstones

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The Ape, the chosen mode of transport for many Mediterranean workers

Eucalyptus, all in a row

Sun loungers, all in a row

Memorials at Muravera 

Cactus flowering at the beach

Bandits and other barbarians

Way up in Le Barbagie heartland (in English this means 'barbarian') sits a mountaintop village notorious for its history of banditry, killings and kidnappings: Orgozolo. For much of the twentieth century Orgozoloans have been killing themselves and others. When they were not murdering rival families, reputedly at the rate of two killings a month into the 1950s, they were heavily into sheep rustling, which was soon forsaken for international kidnapping, which likely paid a great deal more.

Very recently, in fact in 1992, the child of a Saudi millionaire basking on the Costa Smerelda, was captured and held to ransom in the hills near here.

Today the villagers are attempting to improve their image, amend their ways, by encouraging tourists to come view some 150 political and satirical murals that locals have helped to paint along the main winding thoroughfares of this grim little hilltop town. As we wander, we see older men staring in small sullen groups along the streets. Packs of restless youths wander, aimlessly, noisily, quickly, from one venue to another, looking for excitement, looking for trouble, maybe just looking for something to do. Older women, in traditional black dress, are the only ones who appear remotely purposeful.

Most of these people know the stories about their town. They know exactly who the bad guys of history were. It is likely that some of these very men were players in some of those notorious gangs. Possibly, too, some of the old women dressed all in black and veiled helped in the planning.

The murals, like the townsfolk, make you feel more than a little uneasy. There is a violence about most of the images, a passion for revolt, a bias against police, a cynicism about corruption. There are many vivid images of war, guns and weapons. And some very sad images of poverty.

The idea of murals for the village started as a school project in 1975 and the number has been increasing since. Now they bring tourists way up into this remote village where carabinieri once feared to come. The tourists bring money, albeit scant day-tripper coin, as the town is still too grindingly poor to offer much in the way of long term stay opportunities. Tho the region abounds with stone archeology. And the locals stare, rather grimly, as tourists take endless snapshots of derelict walls in this derelict little town tarted up with graffiti and pseudo-Picasso style caricatures that bring in too few dollars.

Our sat nav brought us up this way by quite a civilised route. It took us down towards the gulf in a far more adventurous fashion. Switchbacking downhill from the savage heart of the massifs that make up the highest points of Sardinia for just fifty kilometres took us nearly two solid hours. The limestone grey face of sheer rock that is the Supramonte was, at times, almost at eye-level.

The scenery of this heartland, a huge National Park taking up much of the centre of Sardinia, is, again, all about rocks. The slopes and jagged mountain tops are pocked with natural rock and man-made rock structures: nuraghe, wells, ruined temples, giant tombs, fallen towers, rock mounds and the debris of other structures.

Bronze age man must have been a mountain goat, and massively strong. Simply walking in these vertical parts is an adventure. Raising stones to make a monolith, and having those stones move long distances is a mammoth achievement.  And in this heat. Today our skin feels bleached to the bone as if the skin and flesh underneath has peeled away in layers. We passed wild pigs at one stage and I swear I smelled pork crackling. Down to Dorgoli we went, then onto what has to rate as one of the most scenic roads in the world: the stretch between Dorgoli and Baunei. Another fifty kilometres. Another two hours.

Near the top of a long spine of the Monti di Gennargentu, engineers have carved a ledge for a road south. Literally a ledge. The road hangs off the high side of the mountains: range after range of them. There were hardly any switchbacks. The road stayed at snow sign height for much of the time, with views to the west over massive grand canyons of Sardinia, and down, directly down, over the shortest guardrails, into villages dropped so far below, they looked shattered.

Built atop the road, kilometre after kilometre, are amazingly engineered snow tunnels, called galleria, with stark simple minimalist columns offering panorama and support on the view side. They'll likely still be there centuries from now, when folk in space vehicles might fly themselves by, gawping in awe at what engineers achieved way back when.

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Political mural in remote hill village of Orgosolo

Typical villager, woman in black 

A tragedy

Artist at work 

Supramonte, almost at eye level at times

Galleria route from a distance

No grazie

Women doing what women do

Men doing what men do

Folk tales and evil spirits

There is little to hold one's interest in any of the coastal or interior towns on the east of Sardinia. Throughout history the Sardinians have struggled, there has clearly been little time for frills and fancy. Town buildings are plain: breeze block or brick, sometimes rendered, most times not, sometimes painted, most times not.  Nuoro is a major centre in the mountain region and, like most of the other towns we have seen, has two parts to it, an old historic centre and a new town for a new age. Neither is very interesting, but Nuoro does have a couple of traditional museums worth visiting, and if there are ethnographic museums to be found on this island I don't mind how ugly the town.

Mind you, we had to wait two hours, until the clock struck three, for the siesta to pass to enter. And the day was hot, so walking shadeless streets in a hilly town while waiting for a museum to open was quite a challenge. Still it was worth it, to see the tableau of nearly a hundred folk costumes that the villages around these parts historically wear on special occasions, festivals and feasts.

Lots of fiery red -- for independence; black for brooding, half underskirts that pull up over the head as a halo hat; scarves that look like face masks, pantaloons and tall rich sumptuous fabrics for the wealthy; simpler garb for the peasanta, elaborate stitchwork and cutwork on even the plainest pieces and many pantaloons and decorative styles that look quite foreign, even Cossack.

Just a little south of Nuoro is the village of Mamoiada. Villagers here celebrate the tale of Saint Anthony, who, they say, stole fire from hell and brought it to earth for man. Hundreds of villagers dress up as creatures of evil, Mamuthones, in frightening and ghoulish masks, hooded garb, and sheepskin, bearing heavy weights of cow bells over their shoulders.

The Mamuthones are captured, roped, and lead through the village by red-costumed gendarmes -- Issokadores -- who drive them from the village for another twelve months. Allaying the fears of rural man this age old battle of good over evil is played out symbolically in these parts on a regular basis.

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Traditional garb of the Sardinian hills

Heavily masked, clothed in black sheepskin

Mamuthones, clanging their presence

Issokadores leading the Mamuthones through the village

Mamuthone mask

The sweet death, and infinity

We tore ourselves away from the infinity pool and headed up into the interior to find the real Sardinia, where we found more than we bargained for. First we headed up the mountain to Calangianus, the cork capital of Sardinia.

We've been following the cork story of this region since Corsica. High in these mountains we learned that most of the wine packaged in Italy is stoppered with Calangianus cork. The trees are a lush green and have tiny green leaves, a gnarled trunk skeleton, and about an inch thick bark that is harvested first when the tree is about twenty-five years old, and thereafter, every ten years. It can live for 150 years. Just after harvest the bared trunk is orange. Later it turns black. The mountains, right to the tree line, are thick with picturesque cork trees, and rocks.

Nearby is Luras, goulish Luras. So high and so remote are these villages that in days long past they were pretty much a law unto themselves. Up in these high parts a chilling act of euthanasia for the terminally ill, 'la dolce morte: the sweet death, was practised for centuries, the last here, in 1929.

The local woman of death, sa femmina accabadora, would arrive in the deep of night. With her face covered and her clothes all in black, she would enter through an arranged unlocked door and quietly, with a very basic hammer made of olive wood, skilfully dispose of the terminally ill patient then leave without a word, or without payment. The law looked the other way. The church did the same. But, just imagine being that woman, that village woman whose job it was to do that deed. Try to imagine her night dreams. Did she have a husband? children? How did they cope knowing what she did in the middle of the night? How hard would all that have been to do, to accept? Ah, these remote isolated societies how unusual they seem to my psyche.

Down the hill a few hundred metres we find our first Sardinian nuraghe: the Nuraghe Majori. This is what we came to Sardinia to see. There are some 7000 Nuraghi (stone towers) left in Sardinia: the product of a Nuragic group of people from the Bronze Age who built these magnificent stone towers as places of shelter, storage and safety.

This one is quite complex. On the ground floor it has a corridor through the middle of two cone-roofed circular spaces, built rather like igloos. The corridor links directly to a stone encircled open yard, then a wraparound stairway links the roofs of the first level to an upper nuraghe, used as a silo, to preserve food.

This Nuraghe looks down over several other similarly built complexes on the surrounding mountains. So many of them everywhere, so many rocks. We will never see them all. The boulders that were used to build these ancient towers are massive. The construction is drystone. How many men must have been needed simply to move the stones that make up this tiny Majori complex, let alone all the others? How did they move them in days when there were no roads up in these rock pitted parts: no smooth tracks to haul large boulders to and fro. Such precision, such mathematical skill. How little we know of these amazing people. How much we need to extrapolate from what they left behind.

We came home to a swim in our infinity pool and noticed again the tall mature eucalyptus trees soaking up the spare ground water of Sardinia. Who bought these trees to this land? And why? Why would you want these water sapping gums in this hot dry country? So much we have still to learn.

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And here we swam 

A forest of cork trees

Cork harvest scars close up 

Nuraghe Majori

Linking corridor in the complex