Luras

Luras is in Gallura but does not speak Gallurese: its inhabitants use a variety of Logudorese, while at Calangianus, a few kilometres away, Gallurese is spoken. The name is disputed too: some derive it from laurus, the laurel; others from the Latin lura, meaning a wineskin or a sack, a word the local imagination is said to have attached to rocks in the countryside that looked like sacks.

Of the seventy-eight dolmens so far identified in Sardinia, four stand here — Ladas, Alzoledda, Ciuledda and Billella — and no other town has as many; the people of Luras called them sepulturas de zigantes or de paladinos, burials of giants or of paladins. The one at Ladas carries the second largest capstone on the island. The entrance of Alzoledda faces the point where, around 2825 BC, Alpha Crucis rose, the brightest star of the Southern Cross: from the northern hemisphere it has not been visible for some three thousand years.