Ollolai

Ollolai was the capital of its Barbagia — the Barbagia di Ollolai carries its name — and it stands above nine hundred metres, the second highest comune in Sardinia. On the fifth of August 1490 it burned. In those years the village was split between its two most powerful families, the Arbau, who were with the Aragonese, and the Ladu, who sided with Arborea; a son of the Ladu, whom the Franciscan friars were educating with care, was killed and his body found in the well of the convent garden. Of the crime, probably the work of the Arbau, the friars were accused, and they left in haste, carrying away only a fine wooden crucifix, still kept in the cathedral of Santa Giusta a few kilometres from Oristano. Two days after they went, the fire broke out. Legend says the friars cursed the place and that, leaving never to return, they beat its dust from their shoes so that nothing of it should go with them; far more probably it was a reprisal against a village still loyal to a house, that of Arborea, which by then no longer existed. Oral tradition counts seven quarters in the old capital — Ollolai, su Trihinzu, Moroniai, Donniheddu, Mirisone, Orrocohina and Su 'e Pezzi — and says only the first came through.

Rebuilt, in 1604 the village was incorporated into the duchy of Mandas, the fief of the Maza; under the house of Savoy the lordship passed to the Tellez-Giron d'Alcantara, from whom it was redeemed in 1839. Then it emptied. In 2015 the council began selling the houses of the old centre for the token price of one euro, to buyers undertaking to restore them and keep them for at least five years; after the American presidential election of 2024 it offered them to citizens of the United States, and the mayor recounted that in the weeks that followed thirty-eight thousand requests came in. Water is the thing that has never been lacking here: inside the built-up area is the spring of Gupunnio, which everyone calls Sa 'Untana Manna, the big fountain, and which someone learnedly rebaptised Regina Fontium, while the washing place of Su Sapunadorju is Sa 'Untanedda, the little fountain. In the parish church of San Michele arcangelo, above a wooden choir of 1600, hangs the great crucifix painted by Franco Bussu, of Ollolai.