Orune

Orune stands at eight hundred metres, looking out like a balcony over the valley of the rio Isalle, and from up there you can see Mont'Albo, the sea of the Baronia and the Gennargentu. Just outside the village is Su Tempiesu, the sacred spring of the nuragic age. In the area of Sant'Efis, where a Roman vicus once stood, coins, tools and a worked glass chalice have come to light, showing the Apostles and Jesus handing Saint Paul the scroll of the laws.

The speech of Orune is among the most conservative varieties of Sardinian and has a feature found nowhere else on the island: a voiceless s, identical to the Castilian one. In the second half of the nineteenth century the village was caught in a violent feud with neighbouring Bitti, formally closed by the Paci di San Giovanni, signed thanks to the local councils and the religious institutions. Out of a real crime committed here in those years Grazia Deledda drew her novel Colombi e sparvieri.