Samugheo has 3,183 inhabitants in the Mandrolisai, in an area they call Brabaxianna here, the gateway to the Barbagia. Eight kilometres from the village, sheer above the gorge of the Riu Araxixi, stands the castle of Medusa: built in Byzantine times over a late Roman fortification, it served to control the territory and to hold back the barbaricini who came down to sack the villages of the Marmilla. It is cut into the marble, and getting there today is hard because the vegetation has taken it back. Legend says the ghost of a queen Medusa still lives in it.
In 1507 Samugheo and the whole territory around it obtained a rare thing: to be governed by a man of the place, chosen by election. Every year the inhabitants put forward three names, and the king of Aragon had to take his official from that shortlist. The other thing the village has taken back are the mamutzones, the carnival masks, which returned to the streets in the early nineteen-eighties: black goatskin, cowbells at the waist and on the head su casiddu, a cork headdress with real goat horns. At a certain point in the parade they stop, form a circle, and one by one take off the headdress and set it down in the middle.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Samugheo
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Samugheo, but an easy day trip away.