The name of Meana is a measure of distance. Through this territory ran the Roman road from Cagliari to Olbia, and its stations were called Bhiora, Valenza, Mediana, Augustis, Sorabile, Caput Tirsi: Mediana stood exactly halfway along the route, and from mediana comes Meana. The town, in short, bears the name of the point where the traveller was midway, neither here nor there. In the Middle Ages it was the head of the curatoria of the Barbagia di Meana — which still carries its name — but it lost that role, which passed to Belvì. On the coat of arms, granted in 1957, stands the nuraghe Nolza, and it is drawn in ruins: the comune chose to put a ruin into its heraldry, and not the whole building that ruin once was.
The parish church of San Bartolomeo is first mentioned in a document of 1341, but not a single fourteenth-century element survives in the building; an inscription on the tympanum of the portal dates the present church to 1589, and the bell tower was begun later. The feasts here are entrusted to the year-groups: the patron's feast, in August, is run by the fifty-year-olds and the twenty-five-year-olds of the town, two generations exactly twenty-five years apart. In October, for Cortes Apertas, the courtyards of the houses and the cellars are opened, and through the streets passes su stregiu de sa sposa, the bride's trousseau, in baskets held in the arms or carried on the head. The railway crossing the territory has since 1997 carried tourists only, and the station, as often in these parts, stands some kilometres from the houses.
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📅 Every year, on 23 and 24 August
On 24 August Meana Sardo, a municipality of 1,913 inhabitants in the province of Nuoro, celebrates its patron saint San Bartolomeo with a festival lasting three or four days.
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 Meana Sardo, but an easy day trip away.
