The village's name is a spring. According to the dictionary of Angius and Casalis it comes from bena de Tudi, the vein of Tudi, referring to the thermal waters; another reading resolves it as bena 'e tottu, everyone's spring. On a map of about 1500 kept in the Vatican Museums the village is already written Benetutti, and the municipal arms carry a fountain with three basins. That water was being used long before: here stood the Roman baths of Aquae Lesitanae, and it is said the springs were a hundred and ten, each with a stone slab beside it naming the ailment it cured. The remains came to light again in 1971 during works for the modern spa, and in 1983 further excavations uncovered the calidarium with its mosaics; near the baths stood a shrine to Aesculapius, identified by two columns and three altars, one of them with a votive dedication.
Benetutti belonged to the giudicato of Torres and to the curatoria of the Goceano, passed to Arborea and then to the marquisate of Oristano; after the final defeat of the Arboreans in 1478 the Aragonese made it a royal fief, that is one administered directly by officials of the Crown and not by a feudal lord. The buyout came in 1839, as in the rest of the island. In the parish church of Sant'Elena there is a retablo of 1549 attributed to the Master of Ozieri, held to be one of the most original expressions of the Sardinian Renaissance. And here, and only here and in the Goceano around, a very rare old wine is still made, the Arvesiniadu.
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📅 Every year, on 18 August
On 18 August Benetutti, a municipality of 1,971 inhabitants in the province of Sassari, celebrates its patroness Sant'Elena Imperatrice (Saint Helena the Empress).
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Benetutti, but an easy day trip away.
