Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: Holy, under the olive trees

So many nuraghic spots we have visited now, but none more evocative than the Santa Christina complex in rolling agricultural country near Paulilatino. This is a fourteen acre sight of sheer delight. It was shaded by ancient gnarled olive trees and tiny white flowers were falling to the ground making a soft confetti carpet underfoot, and with the sun slanting soft yellow rays through tiny openings in the tree canopy, it all felt quite magical, a bit like a fairy glen.

This Nuraghic village was relatively small with a single tall tower, some surrounding hut remnants and two very long hall huts, like passage Nuraghe, about fifteen metres long and two metres wide. My guess is these might occasionally have been used as dormitories for Nuraghic visitors.

Because, on the other side of the complex lies the most beautiful example of a Nuraghic sacred well that we have yet seen. This one is exceptional in its architecture and one of the most marvelous examples of a hypogean temple in Sardinia. The sacred well temple is made up of a stairway starting at ground level that descends into the earth to a rock-lined circular purifying room which has a tholos roof like most nuraghes, where the rocks make a dry-stone dome curving into the top, finishing with a circular hole in the roof that operates as a skylight.

The stairway, which takes you down to the temple proper, is trapezoidal, and extraordinarily beautiful. The rocks, carved immaculately, seem to slope and float in behind you, as you descend. Straight edges seem to tilt, curve and close you in. An extraordinary sensation. And such a design. The well temple feels special. For only half the year spring water trickles in and fills the floor space of the temple and it is here that the Nuraghic pagans practised their purifying rituals and their cult of the waters.

Such a special place that other Nuraghic folk would have visited here, like pilgrims, just to be a part of it. And they would have brought with them those tiny bronze statuettes similar to these we have been seeing in museums, as votive offerings. Archeologists have uncovered some from this well, just as exquisitely designed and beautifully made.

These Nuraghic pagan rituals were happening here around 1200 BC. Over 2, 500 years later, in 1200 AD a little church was built flat bang in the middle of this complex. In its tabernacle it held treasured relics of Saint Cristina. So worshipped was Cristina, that pilgrims poured in to visit this humble little church, surrounded by nuraghic remnants.

Such was their passion for the little saint that these pilgrims didn't simply throw down their bedrolls and make a few quick votive offering to Christina before heading off to another stop on the pilgrimage route. This place held them in such thrall that many of the pilgrims went into the fields and gathered remnant basalt stones, Nuraghic stones, then laboured to paste them together with mud mortar, building themselves temporary small stone shelters: little houses called muristhenes, and little dormitories called cumbessias. They still stand today. In the dappled light, surrounding the little church run by Camaldolese monks. Christians and Pagans, together under the olive trees, all hunkered down and holy.

oooOOOooo