The name of Dorgali speaks of water: it comes from sorga, spring, a word of old Provençal and Catalan that the Victorine monks brought with them when they arrived, and in the local speech unu durgalu is still a channel, a place of running water. To the Cistercians, who came after them, was granted the Franca di Jurifai, a free land placed between the four judgedoms and partly inside this territory. Which is enormous: Dorgali is the eighth largest municipality in Sardinia, and it is so for a precise reason, because in 1842, when the municipal boundaries were being settled, it knew how to make its weight felt. It runs from the sea at Cala Gonone up to the Supramonte.
The Romans left here the settlements of Thurcali and Cares, and from Cares comes a bronze plaque of the fourth century recording the barracks of the local fire watch. Then the countryside emptied: nearly all the villages of the Dorgali land disappeared in the second half of the fourteenth century, and the last of them held out until 1567 and 1610. Between 1678 and 1688 plague and famine cut the population, then about three thousand, to less than half. The turn came with a hole in the mountain: in 1860 the first tunnel and the road to Cala Gonone were opened, and with the bridge over the Cedrino in 1866 the centuries of isolation ended. Electric light arrived in 1924.
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📅 Every year, on 25 November; 29 September brings the feast of the Angel for the three archangels
Dorgali celebrates Saint Catherine of Alexandria on 25 November. On 29 September the feast of the Angel is held, dedicated to the angels Raphael, Michael and Gabriel, in the church the townspeople simply call the Church of the Angel or Madonna di Gonare.
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 Dorgali, but an easy day trip away.
