Villaurbana

In the territory of this village, which lies between the Campidano of Oristano and the Marmilla at the foot of Monte Arci, there are forty nuraghi. It is not an estimate: they are counted and called by name one by one, and their names are already a description of the countryside — Bau Mendula, Bidella, Crabas, Craddaxius, Is Procibis, Minda Jara, Perdu Ennas, Pranu Terra, S'Acqua Bella, Sa Mitza, Sedda Scala, Solamardini, Tanusara, Turriu, and so on, with four numbered Nuraxeddu and three Cuccuru Petrosu. There are the giants' tombs besides, among them those of Craddaxius. Forty nuraghi for a village that today does not reach one thousand five hundred inhabitants, and which bears instead a Latin name: Villaurbana comes from Villa Urbis, the villa of the city.

The first certain notice of the village is one of the honourable kind. In 1395, when Eleonora d'Arborea concluded peace with the king of Aragon, Villaurbana was among the villages that elected the men charged with swearing the peace and signing the treaty. Afterwards it followed the fortunes of Oristano: once the giudicato had lost its independence, the marquisate went to the Cubello, and when the heir Leonardo Alagon rebelled the king confiscated everything from him, so much so that in 1493 Ferdinand the Catholic took for himself the title of marquis of Oristano and count of Goceano as well. In 1767 Charles Emmanuel the Third included the village in the marquisate of Arcais for the Flores Nurra, from whom it was redeemed in 1839. In 1854 Casalis counted a thousand and ten inhabitants here, «almost all farmers and shepherds». The coat of arms says the same thing in two images: seven ears of wheat and an olive tree, that is bread and oil, and beneath them the knight San Crispo, who is at once the saint the village venerates and the name of the stream that crosses its land.