Perdasdefogu

The village's name is a kiln. Perdas de fogu, in Sardinian, means stones for fire, and refers to the limestone burnt in kilns to make lime; the inhabitants call the village Foghesu, from fogu, the fire, that is the kiln itself, and from that comes the name they give themselves, foghesus. The village was abandoned at the end of the thirteenth century and repopulated during the fifteenth; in 1363 the king of Aragon placed this area in the county of Quirra, granted in fief to Berengario Carroz, and the buyout from the last feudal lords came in 1839.

Perdasdefogu, however, is known for another reason. Here, as at Arzana and Villagrande Strisaili, people over ninety are extraordinarily numerous, and from this village comes the longest-lived family in the world: in 2014 Consola Melis turned a hundred and seven, and with eight brothers and sisters over eighty and ninety the family's ages added up to eight hundred and twenty-eight years. In 2021, with eight living centenarians out of little more than one thousand seven hundred inhabitants, the village was recorded as the most long-lived in Italy; in 2022, when a ninth centenarian was added, as the most long-lived in the world. The inter-service experimental and training range of Salto di Quirra also lies within the municipal territory.