Near the Giara, in central-southern Sardinia, stands the symbol par excellence of the Nuragic civilization, Su Nuraxi Barumini, a Nuragic village, the most impressive (and best preserved) of the thirty Baruminesi Nuragic sites, as well as the most important legacy that the civilization “of the towers” has left us.

Let us remember that “nuraghe” means “pile of stones and cavities”, and indicates an architecture with turreted walls. To date, over 7,000 nuraghes have been recorded throughout the island (including single towers and complex nuraghes) and in the territory of Barumini there are about thirty of them.

As we previously reported in the article The Giara and its little horses, the Giara, “Sa Jara” in Sardinian, in the province of Medio Campidano, is a 244 km walk that can be done in three hours starting from the Gabbiano Azzurro H๏τel & Suites. It is a somewhat long route but it is really worth it, being the only Sardinian site classified by UNESCO as a world heritage site in 1997.

The majestic site was entirely excavated between 1950 and 1957, under the supervision of the archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu, a “father” of Sardinian archaeology, bringing to light important remains of tools, weapons, pottery and ornamental objects.

Su Nuraxi Barumini, all in basalt, volcanic stone from the nearby Giara park, has a stratification of two thousand years, from the 16th century BC to the 7th century AD. A central tower (keep) and four corner towers connected by a bastion, with around fifty huts, wells and cisterns all around, make up the complex. It is one of the largest Nuragic villages in Sardinia.

Initially it was a quadrilobate nuraghe, that is with a bastion of four corner towers plus a central one, dating back to the 16th-14th century BC, subsequently the settlement developed between the 13th and 6th century BC.

The walls are made of overlapping stone blocks and the doors and windows are slightly inclined in order to reduce the entry of light and decrease the risk of breaking the architrave, more often in the center and less at the sides, because they knew that the architraves break in the center.

As always in Nuragic archaeology, it is a matter of hypothesis as to what the functions of the nuraghe were: a watchtower to monitor cultivated fields and herds of cattle, but also parts of a religious complex.

A Nuragic village was built all around it, which today is made up of about fifty huts, but according to Giovanni Lilliu, the number of huts varies from 40 to 200, ᴀssuming between 100 and 1000 inhabitants. Among the huts found, the largest and most complex is the one reserved for the chief’s meetings, then there is the hut reserved for the inhabitants’ ᴀssemblies, but perhaps also for religious rites since religious symbols were found. Other rooms could have been workshops, kitchens and agricultural processing centers. Later, in the early Iron Age (9th-8th century BC), sewers and roads were built.

During the 6th century BC, Su Nuraxi Barumini suffered from decay and was subsequently rebuilt first by the Carthaginians, then by the Romans and then abandoned definitively because in the 5th century BC when two different cultures met, which was followed by a progressive decline of the settlement with a resulting demographic decline.

In the 1990s, during the restoration work of Casa Zapata, the residence of the Sardinian-Aragonese barons, from the mid-1500s, located above the Nuragic complex. Another Nuragic complex came to light: Su Nuraxi ‘e Cresia. The protection and enhancement, with the aim of promoting these exceptional complexes, is entrusted to the “Fondazione Barumini Sistema Cultura”, which today also benefits from the opening of the new “Centre for Communication and Promotion of Cultural Heritage” dedicated to the archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu.