Uta

The name comes from the Latin uda and means damp, marshy: the village lies in the Campidano of Cagliari and carries the nature of its ground written on it. Between 290 and 304 two young women lived here, Flaviana and Emerenziana, who every day walked the road to Cagliari to visit the Christians shut up in the prisons and bring them food. They were found out and taken before the judge Barbarus, who had them tortured and killed. Today they are venerated as saints, and their relics lie partly in the cathedral of Cagliari and partly in the parish church of Uta.

The church of Santa Maria was built by the Benedictines of Saint-Victor of Marseilles, who came all this way after the judge of Cagliari Torchitorio I had handed them the old church of San Genesio: beside it they also put up a monastery. Of the remoter past there survive at least 26 sites with the remains of nuragic huts scattered across the territory, and eight nuragic bronze figurines that in June 1849 a carpenter found at the foot of Monte Arcosu; today they are in the national archaeological museum of Cagliari. The railway station, meanwhile, is called Villaspeciosa-Uta and stands in the next municipality.