Palmas Arborea

Around the year one thousand there were three villages here with the name Palmas: Villa de Palmas, the one still standing; Palmas de Ponti, between two ponds, abandoned by the fourteen hundreds; and Palmas Maiori, beside the pond that still carries its name. The name comes from the palm groves that once surrounded the area. In the papers the village appears as Villa de Palmas from 1342, and it kept that name until 1868, when it took the one it has now: the addition served to keep it from being confused with the other Palmas, down in the Sulcis.

In the Middle Ages Palmas counted for something: it was part of the curatoria of Simaxis, in the giudicato of Arborea. When the giudicato fell, in 1420, it entered the marquisate of Oristano, and from 1478 it passed under the Aragonese; and from then on, say the sources without mincing words, it went on declining. In 1767 it was swallowed into the marquisate of Arcais, and in 1839 it bought itself free with the end of feudalism. Of the old landscape there remain the water and the wood: the pond of Pauli Maiori, one of the most important wetlands in Italy, and the forest of Sa Dispensa.