Alà dei Sardi

Romanisation here was late and superficial, and the place names show it: in the countryside of Alà there are still dozens of pre-Latin toponyms — Boddò, Seultà, Burachele, Alzarò, Serì, Istenolì. Where the Romans did settle in earnest, at Latari, the land was divided among war veterans by the usual method of centuriation, and the map still carries their names: Marcheddìne comes from a Marcellinus, Mùdule and Mudulu-riu from a Mutulus, Fenìdde from a Venilius, Madròne from a Matronius. The older settlement, that of the Balari, was called Balare and stood south of today's village: it was probably destroyed in the harsh Roman reprisal of 177 before Christ.

The meaning of the name is disputed, and the case is instructive. One reading derives it from the Balari, with the loss of the initial B that is typical of the local speech; another from the Ilienses; a third, put forward in the nineteenth century by a canon, from the Latin ala, a cavalry squadron, an improbable idea because the word is stressed on its final vowel and so points to a pre-Latin name. Yet it is precisely that study which recorded, south of the village, the place name Balare: the wrong hypothesis supplied the evidence for the right one. The oldest document naming Alà is of 1106, the list of the twenty-seven villages of the diocese of Castro. From the peak of Senalonga, at one thousand and seventy-seven metres, one can see the gulf of Olbia, the island of Tavolara and, on clear days, the mountains of Corsica.