Torpè

Torpè has 2,891 inhabitants on the north-eastern coast, and the Rio Posada cuts its territory in two: almost all the prehistoric monuments are on the northern bank. There are a great many of them, the highest concentration in the whole upper Baronia: twelve nuraghi, a tomb of the giants, two nuragic villages and five domus de janas. The most important is the nuraghe San Pietro, which stands on a low rise in the middle of the alluvial plain near the river: an archaic complex nuraghe of red trachyte and schist, with a central keep and four side towers.

The thing to know about that nuraghe is how you get inside. The keep can be reached only from the courtyard, and to reach the courtyard you have to slip along a corridor less than a metre wide which ends under an architrave set about a metre from the ground: whoever enters is obliged to stoop. In the middle of the courtyard opens a well with a mouth of sixty centimetres, which then widens like a funnel for almost six metres. In one of the four towers there remain the clay of a hearth and a low wall running round the base to form a long seat, the same arrangement as in the so-called hut of the chiefs at the nuragic sanctuary of Santa Cristina. Much more recently, in November 2013, the flood brought by cyclone Cleopatra struck Torpè and killed a woman.