Viddalba

The village stands at the edge of the lower Coghinas valley, on the extreme western border of Gallura, and it has two names that do not resemble each other: Viddalba in Italian and Viddaècchja in Gallurese, which is the language spoken there. Under and around the built-up area there is a good deal of ancient material: domus de janas, nuraghi, a nuragic village, a settlement, a necropolis and a bridge of Roman date. The objects that came out of it — ceramics, glass, precious pieces — did not end up elsewhere but are kept in the civic archaeological museum of the village itself, which for a comune of a little over one thousand five hundred inhabitants is no small thing.

Of the Middle Ages there remained the Romanesque church of San Giovanni Battista, and the verb must be put in the past: the old building fell into ruin, its ancient statue was carried to the nearby church of San Leonardo, where it is still kept, and the place of worship was then entirely rebuilt from scratch. The feast of Saint John the Baptist goes on being celebrated there. In the village there are also the church of the Most Holy Virgin of Pompeii, which gives the parish its name, and that of Our Lady of the Rosary, with a plain façade and a single nave divided into four bays by three round arches. The municipal coat of arms came late, granted only in 2014. As for work, besides farming and crafts — textiles, wrought iron, carved stone — the building trade has been gaining weight in recent times, and the reason is stated without circumlocution: near the coast it is no longer permitted to build, and the trade has moved inland.