Ghilarza

Ghilarza stands on the plateau of Abbasanta, at the foot of the Marghine and the Montiferru, and belongs to none of the historical regions around it: it is not Logudoro, not Marghine, not Barbagia, and its territory is simply called the ghilarzese. The reason is linguistic: here the Campidanese speech ends and the Logudorese begins, with a softness of accent that sets it apart from both and still more from the Barbagian next door. It is a seam between three languages and three cultures. Since Roman times the town has lain on the Karalibus Turrem, the road that joined Caralis to Turris Libisonis, today's Porto Torres; in the Middle Ages it was in the curatoria of Guilcer, within the Giudicato of Arborea, and when the giudicato fell, in 1420, it passed to the Aragonese. It was redeemed from its last feudal lords in 1839, when the feudal system was abolished.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Ghilarza founded its reading circle, and in the early nineteen-hundreds its first women's circle: it was in that atmosphere that Antonio Gramsci was formed, brought here as a child from nearby Ales and raised for some thirteen years, from 1898 to 1911, in the house on corso Umberto that is now a museum. In the nineteen-sixties the town had the highest proportion of graduates on the island. The houses are of basalt, and the skill of the Ghilarza stonecutters long ago passed beyond the municipal boundary, making the place a point of reference for building in Sardinia. Of the churches the oldest is San Palmerio, of the thirteenth century, in white and black trachyte; and out in the countryside stand four small villages called novenari, lived in for only nine days a year, for the feast of the saint each is dedicated to.