Asuni

Asuni closes the Alta Marmilla on a trachyte plateau at 233 metres, between the valleys of the rio Araxisi and its tributaries, and it has something no other Sardinian comune has: marble. The pink of Asuni and the grey cipollino are, in strict petrographic terms, the only marbles on the island; the houses, on the other hand, are built of trachyte. Woodland covers forty per cent of the land — holm oak stands long worked by charcoal burners, cork oaks and downy oaks, with a relict grove on the summit of Monte Ualla, at 589 metres.

Brassica insularis grows on the marble cliffs, the cave salamander lives in the karst caves of Monte Ualla and Castel Medusa, and for about a decade the golden eagle has been resident on the mountain again. The village's history is that of a fief that changed hands fast: it belonged to the Giudicato of Arborea until 1410, then went to the Aragonese and was granted to the Nin, counts of Castillo, sold in 1749 to the Ghilini of Milan, who took the comital title with it, and by them in 1753 to the Marseilles merchant Guglielmo Tauffani; in 1759 it formed a county with Nureci, and it was redeemed from the Tauffani in 1839.