Scano di Montiferro

Inside the village there is a hill called Montrigu 'e Reos, the hill of the guilty, and the name says what happened on it. Christianity reached Scano around the third century, and it was there that the first Christians of the district were martyred; many centuries later, in Spanish times, the same hill was still used to put to death the condemned of every kind. Several of the saints venerated here also come from far away: it was the Byzantines who brought to Scano the cult of Santa Vittoria, San Giorgio, San Nicolò and Santa Barbara, who in the East were among the best loved.

Where the parish church of San Pietro apostolo stands today there was a Camaldolese monastery, founded by the giudice of Torres Costantino III and his wife Marcusa; it was pulled down at the beginning of the seventeenth century because the faithful had grown too many and a larger church was needed. The monks, though, had left long before: the Aragonese drove them out as too close to the Pisans, and tradition tells that in their flight they carried away the riches of the monastery and left the village a curse. The water stayed. The springs of Sant'Antioco are among the largest in Sardinia and give drink to many villages round about. In 1927 Scano passed from the province of Cagliari to that of Nuoro, just re-established; and on 15 March 1943 two hundred women gathered in front of the town hall to protest against the rationing of food.