Cuglieri

Cuglieri has 2,811 inhabitants arranged in an amphitheatre on the Bardosu hill, at the foot of the Montiferru. Down on the coast, between Santa Caterina and S'Archittu, lie the remains of Cornus, the Punic and later Roman city that in 215 before Christ was the centre of the great Sardinian revolt against Rome. Its chief magistrate, Ampsicora, the richest landowner on the island, raised the coastal cities together with Hanno of Tharros and won the support of the Sardinians of the interior; Carthage sent Hasdrubal with about ten thousand men, but the winds pushed the fleet towards the Balearics. The consul Manlius surprised the few troops of Cornus, led by Ampsicora's son Josto, who died in the battle. When the father arrived with the late-landed Carthaginians he too was beaten; he got away to the tribes of the interior and there, grieving for his son and determined not to fall into Roman hands, he took his own life.

Modern Cuglieri has been larger than it looks. From 1821 it was the capital of a province for some forty years, and for forty-four years, beginning in 1927, it housed the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Sardinia. In its territory sixty-four nuraghi and twelve tombs of the giants have been recorded, and on the coast the sea has carved the natural arch of S'Archittu; at Cabu Nieddu, moreover, there is a waterfall that drops straight into the sea, the only one of its kind in Italy.