Su Nuraxi di Barumini: nuraghi in Sardegna, patrimonio Unesco

Su Nuraxi (“the nuraghe”) of Barumini is the only world heritage site in Sardinia. While on one hand UNESCO wanted to recognize the architectural uniqueness of the nuraghi, stating that “no parallel exists anywhere else in the world,” the choice of Su Nuraxi of Barumini among the approximately 7,000 existing nuraghi in Sardinia is due to the fact that it is the first case in which the excavation campaign was conducted scientifically (this was in the 1950s). In Barumini, the entire surrounding village was also excavated, so we have a complete view of the history of the complex, which lasted about 1,800 years.

Su Nuraxi: the discovery

Su Nuraxi was discovered and studied by the father of Sardinian archaeology, the Accademico dei Lincei Giovanni Lilliu, who was also born and raised in Barumini and had always noticed a strange hill in the countryside just outside his village. Lilliu, besides being a skilled archaeologist, was also fortunate. In fact, in the central tower that constitutes the first nucleus of the entire complex, he found a wooden beam, probably the step of a ladder.

It was this beam, thanks to carbon 14 analysis, that allowed dating the beginning of the site’s history and, more generally, provided a more precise chronological connotation to the Nuragic age. We are in the middle of the Bronze Age, with the central tower of Barumini datable to 1600-1500 B.C.

Construction Features of Su Nuraxi

The construction features of Su Nuraxi are the classic ones of this type of monument: large basalt blocks, coming from the nearby Altipiano della Giara, are placed next to each other creating a truncated cone shape, and they support themselves without the need for cement mortars. The interior rooms have a pseudo-dome or tholos vault, built with circles of projecting stones that become increasingly narrow. As high as they may seem to us, what we see today of the nuraghi is only one of the two or three floors on which they were built, accessed by a spiral staircase that ran between the outer wall and the masonry work of the tholos. A trace of this staircase can be seen inside the central tower of Su Nuraxi, to the left of the entrance.

The second construction phase dates back to the 13th-12th centuries B.C. and involves the realization of a curtain wall with four towers that surround the central tower: Su Nuraxi became a quadrilobate nuraghe. The walls and the new towers enclose a courtyard of 56 square meters with a well connected to a water source in the center. Considering the living conditions of the prehistoric age and how important water was in a land like Sardinia, where rain often lacks, we can easily affirm that the fortress was built to protect the source, a guarantee of survival for the community.

Relations with the surrounding tribes probably were not idyllic: about a century later, in fact, the entrance to the central courtyard and all the loopholes were enclosed in an imposing facing wall about 3 meters thick, which adheres to the citadel like a second skin and which brings the thickness of the walls to reach 5-6 meters. Inside there is no longer access at ground level, but by climbing a rope ladder to a raised opening.

The complex at this point becomes truly imposing: as already mentioned, we must imagine the towers not only much higher than we see them today, but also equipped with terraces from which the territory could be more effectively controlled, giving the nuraghi an appearance vaguely reminiscent of medieval castles. These terraces have not come down to us, but the brackets that supported them have, detached from the towers. One is resting on the edge of the well of Su Nuraxi. The facing of the curtain wall may have allowed the construction of even wider terraces, improving the defensive action of the building.

During this period, an external curtain wall was also built, equipped with seven towers, and the village developed with about sixty circular, single-room huts. One of these, larger and equipped with a row of stones following the internal perimeter and serving as a seat, is identified as the meeting hut.

Su Nuraxi through the centuries

In the following centuries, the site experienced a period of decline which led it, in the 8th century BC, to become uninhabited and fall into ruin. Therefore, in the fourth phase of settlement (8th-6th century BC), the Nuragic fortress lost its military importance, but the tower became a symbol, perhaps with religious meanings. Indeed, as also attested in other sites, a model of a stone nuraghe was found inside the meeting hut. It was probably placed at the center of the space, almost like a totem to inspire the decisions to be made.

The village, however, experienced a new phase of development: the outer defensive wall was partially demolished and the 150 huts built during this period clustered at the foot of the ancient citadel. Where the huts rested against the straight walls of the ancient fortress, mainly rectangular and trapezoidal plants with multiple rooms now appear. The dwellings were grouped into blocks connected by narrow streets, and some infrastructures appeared, such as primitive sewage water channeling systems.

The last phase coincides with the Punic and Roman period (6th century BC – 3rd century AD). About fifty huts in the village remained inhabited by the rural population. In the silo of one of the towers of the nuraghe, a deposit of ex-votos datable from the 6th to the 1st century BC was found. This suggests that during that period part of the space had become a sanctuary dedicated to Demeter and Kore, deities linked to agriculture, similarly to what happens in the nearby Genna Maria Nuraghe of Villanovaforru.

The collapses and accumulations of other materials gradually filled the courtyard and other structures of the nuraghe, which, over the centuries, became covered with vegetation taking on the appearance of the hill that had once captured the attention of the young Giovanni Lilliu.

In Barumini there is also another site of great interest: it is Casa Zapata, a noble house from the end of the 16th century AD under which a nuraghe was hidden, now visible thanks to a fine system of glass walkways. Casa Zapata also hosts a small museum that preserves the most important finds of Su Nuraxi, including the wooden beam that allowed dating the central tower and the stone nuraghe model.