Arzana

The highest peak in Sardinia, Punta La Marmora, stands in the territory of Arzana, and in its woods grows Ilixi 'e Perreddu, one of the largest and oldest holm oaks in Europe, with a crown more than thirty metres across. The village lies at the foot of Monte Idolo, and from up there one sees the Ogliastra plain as far as the gulf of Arbatax. In the heart of the Gennargentu remain the nuragic village of Ruinas and the ruins of other vanished settlements: Bidda Silisè, Cortes de Maceddu, Adana.

Two of those abandoned villages, Silisè and Orruinas, lie at the root of a quarrel that lasted a century. Tradition tells that their people had to leave the mountain to escape a plague, and that only the people of Arzana gave them shelter, thereby earning the right to join the pastures of Silisè and Orruinas to their own. Desulo contested that right, in the courts and on the ground, and the boundary between the two villages was fixed for good only in 1691. Arzana was also the head of its own district, with Lanusei, Ilbono, Elini and Villagrande under it, and in the eighteenth century the Maggiore di Giustizia sat here. Here, in 1900, were born the painter Stanis Dessy and Anselmo Contu, first president of the Sardinian regional council.