Bonarcado

In 1147 Barisone the first, giudice of Arborea, founded here a Camaldolese monastery and a church dedicated to Santa Maria; and at the consecration of that church, in the same year, there were present the four giudici of the island, the archbishop of Pisa and the prelates of Sardinia. It is no small thing: the four men who governed the four Sardinian states, in one village, on one day. The church went on being used for occasions of that kind. In 1237 Pietro the second swore fidelity and vassalage to the pope in it; in 1253 a synod was held there, with the Sardinian bishops and the abbot of Saccargia; and in 1302 a council of bishops. The building had been finished in 1146, in Romanesque forms, and it was partly reworked in the middle of the following century by a group of Arab workmen who had come from Spain.

The other church of the village, the sanctuary of Bonacatu, was being restored when a stretch of mosaic floor came to light beneath it — and that floor puts the origin of the building at least two centuries earlier, taking it back to 400 after Christ. The ground round about is older still: the volcanic soil and the water brought people here very early, and Bonarcado has the highest concentration in Sardinia of the corridor type of nuraghe, nearly all of them on the plateau towards Paulilatino, with names that the local account gives one by one — Tzilighertu, Serra Crastula, Campu Iscudu, Sas Losas, Livandru. There are giants' tombs as well, reworked over the centuries for other uses. The village that grew up among all this declined when the plague cut down its people, and the language still spoken here is Sardinian: since 2004 the comune has taken part in a regional programme to protect it.