Marrubiu

On Monte Arci, part of which falls within the municipal territory, there is obsidian, and here it has been worked since the Neolithic: prehistoric Sardinians traded it over much of the Mediterranean basin, and the volcanic glass of the Arci reached the coasts of southern France, Corsica and some settlements of northern Italy, from Tuscany to Liguria and Emilia-Romagna. The deposits whose ancient working has been proved lie at Tzipaneas, Murus and Monte Sparau. Then came the nuraghi, simple and complex, on the mountain and on the plain, and the Roman farms scattered across this fertile land; the most important site is the Praetorium of Muru Is Bangius, which is unique in Sardinia and was inhabited until the late empire, with evidence reaching well into the Byzantine age. Before the great reclamation that gave birth to Arborea, Marrubiu shared with Terralba the largest lagoon of the Oristano country, the Sassu, today completely drained.

Today's town descends from Zuradili, born in the eleventh century in the giudicato of Arborea: from that period there remain place names such as Su Moru 'e is Pisanus, the path of the Pisans, and some silver genovini struck between 1139 and 1339 and found on that very spot. When the giudicato fell, in 1420, the village passed to the marquisate of Oristano and in 1478 to the Aragonese. In 1644 an attempt was made to repopulate Zuradili, but in vain: the inhabitants soon asked to move down to the plain, and in 1659 the modern centre of Marrubiu was born. In 1712 the town formed the marquisate of San Carlo, granted to the Bono and then to the Paliaccio, from whom it was redeemed in 1839. Much later Marrubiu spent twenty years as a hamlet of Terralba: between the tenth and the thirteenth of December 1947 the town rose against that union, and during a demonstration Terenzino Trudu was killed by the police. In 1948 Marrubiu became an independent comune again.