Laerru

The name comes in all probability from the Latin alaternus, the Italian buckthorn, the evergreen shrub that grows in these parts: a village named after a plant of the scrub. Laerru lies in the heart of the Anglona, and its territory has been inhabited for a very long time — from the lower Palaeolithic to the pre-nuragic, nuragic and Roman ages, and within a few kilometres one finds dolmens, giants' tombs, domus de janas, nuraghi and Roman tombs. In the middle ages it belonged to the Giudicato of Torres, in the curatoria of Anglona; when the giudicato fell, in 1259, it passed to the Malaspina and the Doria, and around 1450 to the Aragonese. In the eighteenth century it ended up in the principality of Anglona, first under the Pimentel and then under the Tellez-Giron d'Alcantara, from whom it was redeemed in 1839, when the feudal system was abolished. The parish church, dedicated to Saint Margaret, is of the sixteenth century in late Gothic forms and keeps two Gothic-Aragonese chapels; the oratory of the Rosario is baroque, of the following century.

What Laerru is known for outside Sardinia, though, is a trade: here they work the radica, the root of the heather that grows in the scrub, and from it they make pipes of great value, sold all over the world. It is patient work, which depends on a local plant and on hands that know what to look for inside a piece of wood. In the arms, granted in 1998, there are the letter L, a golden balance recalling the old belonging to the Giudicato of Torres, and a sheaf of ears, for the farming that has always kept the village standing. There is also a station here, on the Sassari–Tempio–Palau line: public service trains ran through until 1997, and since then only the Trenino Verde runs on the rails.