On the Osono plateau, three kilometres from the village, there once stood a village called Osono, older than Triei. We know it from a document of the end of the giudicale period, of 1227, which names a servant: «Maria Locci, ankila de la villa de Osono». Of how it vanished nothing certain is known; only stories handed down by word of mouth remain, and one of them says it was the people of Osono who came down into the valley to escape the plague and founded the new village. On the name Triei there are two readings: from Tereiu, a place full of broom, which in Sardinian is called terìa and in spring turns the hills yellow, or from Trisei, a village made of three small ones. Triei itself appears for the first time in 1316, in a document on Pisan revenues.
Today the village is an open-air museum. After several editions of Arte a Triei, held in May, the walls and the streets have filled with murals: emigration, war, history, and the one on the Inquisition is given as the largest in Europe; and then statues by Sardinian, Italian and foreign artists. The one church, Santi Cosma e Damiano, is of the 16th and 17th centuries and keeps its cycle of wall paintings almost whole; the 18th-century frescoes are attributed to the Are workshop of Nuoro, and above the triumphal arch the two patrons are painted in oriental dress, with a palm in hand.
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📅 Every year, on 26 September
On 26 September Triei celebrates Saints Cosmas and Damian, two physicians of eastern origin to whom the town's feast is dedicated; the two saints are also remembered on 12 November.
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.
