By Christopher Whinney and Chiara Farneti
Sardinia has some of the wildest and most unexpected country in Europe. It is remote, seldom visited and inaccessible except on foot. Flocks of domestic sheep and goats graze the rough pastures, remote valleys and extensive areas of Barbagia (wilderness) as they have for thousands of years – keeping open the superb system of paths – old mining paths originating in Roman times, sheep and goat paths, and tracks used through centuries to link the most idyllic yet least known features of the island.
Wildlife is plentiful with many birds of prey including various species of eagle, the black vulture and bearded vulture (Lammergeir) and rare Eleonora’s Falcon. In the mountains wild long-horned mouflon sheep, deer and wild boar exist in large numbers, and there is a fascinating flora including various species usually associated with North Africa and some unusual orchids.
Little has changed through the centuries. Shepherds still take their flocks up the same narrow, well-worn mountain tracks as their ancestors, and despite depletion through emigration, the communities retain their strong traditions. Together with the friendliness for which they are renowned, it is this sense of timelessness that still characterises mountain villages, where the noise of video games from the bar, echoing in narrow alleys, is carried on the breeze and soon lost amongst the sound of sheep bells.
Mysterious nuraghi
There are more than 6,000 of these remote stone structures scattered across the island’s hills, yet little is known of their purpose or about the people who built them. There is a seemingly traditional uniformity in their construction, with large stones on the outside forming a tower, and smaller cut or trimmed ones inside forming a ‘beehive roof’ or dome, vaulted corridors and spiral stone steps to upper levels or a terrace. Structures rise to heights of 20m / 60ft, their structural strength (and potential weakness) lying in the immense weight of stone.
Nuraghi have been dated to the mid-Bronze Age – 1800-1500BC. Architecturally they remained the most advanced in the Western Mediterranean until Etruscan times (900BC).
This seemingly rules out direct connection with people who built similar structures (in bagpipe playing areas!) from northern Turkey to Galicia and Scotland (where the ‘brochs’ are thought to date from around 100BC).
Studies of the positioning of 452 nuraghi, some on earlier prehistoric sites, some of them strategic, have shown similarities in the orientation of their entrances. The most common declinations were of around 43° for the earlier nuraghi, and 45½° for the later ones, possibly coinciding with the sunrise at winter solstice and to the moon at its southernmost rising position.
‘Unexpected’ features
In addition to the nuraghi, ‘unexpected’ features includes a huge hollow domed mountain-top (1,686 ft), open to the sky and containing two pre-historic villages, the nesting site of peregrine falcons; magnificent gorges, isolated ‘sanctuary’ churches, splendid cave systems, and remote sandy coves and beaches, fringed with pink oleander, inaccessible except on foot or by sea…
This is some of the wildest and most unexpectedly beautiful countryside in Europe.
