Torralba

Torralba means white tower, from the Latin turris and alba, and in the old papers it is also found as Toralba, Toralva, Turralba. But the real towers here are much older than the name: in the territory more than thirty of them are counted, that is, more than thirty nuraghi, and with them some ten giants' tombs. This is the valley of the Nuraghi, and its largest piece is the nuraghe Santu Antine, one of the biggest and best preserved in all Sardinia, with its central tower reaching seventeen metres. In the village there is the museum of the valley of the nuraghi, which holds together what the digs have given back. The village itself appears in documents around 1064, grown up around the church of Santa Maria, and it lay in the curatoria of the Meilogu, in the giudicato of Torres.

At the fall of the giudicato, in 1259, the territory passed to the Doria, and near here, in 1347, the battle of Aidu de Turdu was fought between the Catalan-Aragonese and the Doria: the Aragonese lost it, though a few decades later they took everything all the same. Then Torralba was a county and after that a marquisate, and in 1750 it entered the marquisate of Valdecalzana, the same one that nearby Bonnanaro ended up in; the redemption came in 1839, with the end of the feudal system. The great feast is that of the Holy Spirit, which lasts four days and closes on the Monday after Pentecost, with the horse processions that come from the country church into the village; and in January the fires of Saint Anthony are lit.