Baratili San Pietro

Baratili San Pietro has a pre-Roman name and a history to be read in the changes of hands. The territory was inhabited in Phoenician times and depended on Tharros; in the Middle Ages it belonged to the giudicato of Arborea, within the curatoria of the Campidano of Oristano, and it was then called simply Baratili. In 1410, once the giudicato had fallen, it entered the marquisate of Oristano, granted first to the Cubello and then to Leonardo Alagon; on the final defeat of the Arborean party it became an Aragonese fief. In 1767 it was incorporated into the marquisate of Arcais, a fief of the Flores Nurra, from whom it was redeemed in 1839 with the end of the feudal system. The second name came later: the denomination Baratili San Pietro is of 1864.

Then the comune was cancelled and made again. In 1927 it was suppressed and aggregated to that of Riola Sardo, and it recovered its autonomy only in 1945: it is the same movement that in those years went through half of Italy, the merging under the regime and the giving back after the war. On its arms the comune has put something that used to be made out of grass: the fassonis, the «big bundles», boats originally from Cabras and Santa Giusta, used in the old days for fishing on the lagoons, built with is fenus, the bundles of marsh hay tied together with plaited rush cords, to make flat hulls about four metres long, with a pointed bow and a squared-off stern. Today the village, which lies in the Campidano of Oristano and speaks the Oristano variety of Campidanese, is known above all for vernaccia, the sweet white wine whose vine dominates the flat landscape round about, and which has its festival every August.