Guided Tours - The Nuragic Village “Su Nuraxi” of Barumini

The Nuragic Complex of Barumini is the most important archaeological site on the Island of Sardinia (in the Province of Cagliari).

Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, “Su Nuraxi” di Barumini is the most complete and best-preserved exemplar of the Nuraghi (a type of prehistoric architecture); it is also evidence to the capacity for innovation and imagination of those that built it, in terms of the types of materials and techniques available at the time. The Village of Barumini, with its nuraghi, demonstrates that this territory was inhabited as early as the Bronze Age. The nuraghi were rotund, cone-shaped defensive towers realized with a drywall boulder construction. In the case of the Village of Barumini, the nuraghi were placed within a gated area made up of smaller towers, linked one to the other by massive walls. These principal structures constituted the village, with small houses in a circular plan. Other structures were built by other peoples later in time to suit varying environments (e.g. domestic and ritual). Huts dating back to the 7th-6th Centuries belonged to the Punic and Roman conquerors. A small, external, wall-enclosed courtyard, rather, is even older, and points to human settlements in the Iron Age (9th-8th Centuries B.C.).

Unbelievably, this courtyard itself is a rehashing of an antemurale, an extra outer defensive wall that encompasses the oldest section of the village (i.e. Bronze Age, 11th-10th Centuries B.C.). The particularity of Barumini is that it is possible to visit not only the ancient lookout tower, but also the remains of an entire village from thousands of years ago.