Maracalagonis

Mara, in Sardinian, is the brackish marsh. Calagonis, on the other hand, was the village next door, which at a certain point emptied out: its inhabitants moved to Mara, and since 1416 the town has been called Mara de Calagonis, that is, it carries stuck to it the name of a place that no longer exists. The nuraghi of the district too are almost all destroyed, plundered one after another, and only traces of them are left; and yet their names — Sa Dom'e s'Orcu, Cuill'e Lepiri, Monti Nieddu — have remained the points by which people here still find their way.

At Carroi, beside the remains of a Punic temple, two sandstone statues of the god Bes were found, the dwarf who protected houses and childbirth, and they are now in the national archaeological museum of Cagliari. Local tradition holds instead that Saint Stephen was born at Calagonis, martyred with a great nail driven into his head: in the parish church dedicated to him the skull with the nail is kept in a case, and the other bones inside the effigy under the high altar. On the coat of arms stands the tower of Su Fenugu, built around 1578 to watch the sea.