Selargius

Selargius is attached to Cagliari but is keen not to be part of it: in 1928 the government merged it into the capital along with Quartucciu, Pirri and Monserrato, and in 1947 it broke away again. Before all that it was a country village with an uncertain name: some derive it from cellarium, the store for farm produce, some from the wax works, some from the salt of the nearby lagoon, some from the cherry and almond trees that around the year one thousand covered thousands of hectares up here. Beneath a building on via Rosselli you can still see an arch sunk three metres below the level of the street: it is what remains of the entrenched camp that Mariano of Arborea set up here in 1366 to cut off supplies to Cagliari, a square of four hectares with sides two hundred metres long.

What makes the town worth a visit, though, is a wedding. On the second Sunday of September sa coja antiga is celebrated, the old-style marriage: the groom goes to fetch the bride at the Ligas house accompanied by launeddas players and by young people in the costume of every village in Sardinia, the procession crosses the town, and in the church of the Assunta the mass is said largely in Sardinian. Then the couple move to the old Romanesque parish church of San Giuliano, where they are bound with sa cadena, the chain, and make a written promise that they and their children may read only after twenty-five years of marriage. The celebration goes on into the night.