Burgos

In Sardinian the village is called Su Burgu, that is, the borough: because it was born as the borough of a castle, and without that castle it would not exist. The fortress of the Goceano stands on a granite peak at six hundred and forty-seven metres, towards monte Rasu, and from up there the whole valley can be seen: it has a triple ring of walls, an inner courtyard and a keep more than fifteen metres high. It was raised in the twelfth century by the giudice Gonario II of Torres. In 1194 the judge of Cagliari, Guglielmo, seized it during the war between the giudicati, and the chronicles tell that he did violence to Prunisinda, the Catalan wife of the judge of Torres, who died shortly afterwards.

The name that has stayed attached to this castle, though, is another: that of Adelasia of Torres. On the death of her brother Barisone III, in 1233, the inheritance of the giudicato fell to her, and with the inheritance came marriage to Enzo of Hohenstaufen, son of the emperor Frederick II, who was made king of Sardinia. The marriage was unhappy; when Enzo was captured by the Bolognese and never came back, Adelasia withdrew inside here in voluntary imprisonment, and stayed until she died. The village below the castle was born later, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, by the will of Mariano IV of Arborea, the father of Eleonora. Then the castle passed to the Genoese, to the Doria and again to the Arborea, until the Aragonese abandoned it: since then it is a ruin that can be seen from far off.