Su Nuraxi di Barumini

About this place

Su Nuraxi di Barumini is the most impressive site of Sardinia's Nuragic civilisation, on the edge of the village of Barumini in south-central Sardinia, about 55 km in a straight line north of Cagliari. Its name simply means «the nuraghe» in the local Sardinian dialect. Nuraghi are massive stone towers built without mortar by the island's Bronze Age people, and thousands still stand across Sardinia. At Su Nuraxi the central tower, built of basalt blocks between about the 17th and 13th centuries BC, originally rose about 18 m, with three rooms stacked inside. Four corner towers joined by a thick wall were later added around it, followed by an outer wall with more towers. Around this fortress grew a village of round stone huts, lived in from about the 13th to the 6th century BC, whose foundations fill the ground like a honeycomb. The site lay hidden under a mound of earth until the 1950s, when the Sardinian archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu excavated it. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. Visits are by guided tour only, and climbing through the narrow passages and stairs of the towers is part of the visit. A combined ticket usually includes the nearby Casa Zapata museum.