Uras

Uras has 2,960 inhabitants at the foot of Monte Arci, in the Campidano of Oristano. The reason a village grew here lies in that mountain: obsidian, the glassy stone that in the Neolithic was worth as much as money, which people came to fetch and to work. There are three explanations of the name and none of them certain: the Sardinian root ur, meaning water; the same root taken instead to mean fire, which is why there is a brazier on the town's coat of arms; or else, according to the linguist Massimo Pittau, the word ura, augury, for the oracular rites of the nuragic age. A few metres from the houses stands the nuragic complex of Sa Domu Beccia, said to have been larger than the famous Su Nuraxi of Barumini.

Near the church of San Salvatore, in 1470, the marquis of Oristano Leonardo Alagon beat the Aragonese viceroy Nicolò Carroz: that battle is still on the coat of arms, in the form of daggers. In 1527 the village was partly destroyed by a Barbary raid. And the most recent date the people of Uras remember is 18 November 2013, when cyclone Cleopatra made the two canals overflow and the water covered almost the whole village: there was enormous damage to houses and fields, and one person died.