Desulo is made of three quarters — Issiria, Ovolaccio and Asuai — which were separate until the road to Fonni was built and which grew into a single village only with the building boom of the sixties and seventies. It stands in the heart of the Gennargentu, at the foot of the island's highest peaks. The name has been explained in many ways, and one explanation rests on a forgery: the Carte d'Arborea, later shown to be a historical fake, derived Desulo from exilium and made it the refuge of a group of Christians driven out of Bosa. Other guesses speak of a «place exposed to the sun» or of a Phoenician word for pasture.
When the giudicato fell, in 1420, the whole Mandrolisai obtained something unusual: to be governed by a lord native to the district and chosen by election. In the old parish church there was a carved and polychrome wooden pulpit of the seventeenth century, the only dated and signed one in Sardinia, now moved to the new church. And near the pass of S'Arcu de Tascusì, the highest road pass in Sardinia, stands the church of the Madonna della Neve: on the last day of 1913 five pedlars of Desulo were coming home when a snowstorm caught them close to the pass, and only two of them, abandoning their horses, managed to reach the village. In 1920 the survivors had that church built, as a vow.
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📅 Every year, on 17 January
Desulo celebrates Saint Anthony the Abbot on 17 January. On 16 July comes the Madonna del Carmelo, and on the second Sunday of September Saint Basil, each with the installation of new Prioresses of the respective confraternities.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Desulo, but an easy day trip away.
