Barrali stands at a crossing: it borders Donori, which belongs to the Parteolla, Sant'Andrea Frius, Ortacesus and Pimentel, which are Trexenta, and Samatzai, which is already Campidano; and across its territory runs the state road 128, the old road that links the south of the island with the centre, in the Barbagia. The village lies at the foot of monte Uda, which looks over all three regions at once. Where the houses stand today there was once a lagoon: that is why the nuraghi are all on the heights, and look more like watchposts than villages. In the Middle Ages Barrali was a small villa of the giudicato of Cagliari; the plague of 1348 emptied the villages of the Trexenta, and after years of abandonment the villa was refounded in 1646 by its first parish priest, Biagio Pia of Ussana, together with the marquis of Villasor. In 1839 the village redeemed itself from its last feudal lord.
Barrali had its monte granatico, an institution born in Sardinia in the 17th century: a bank of grain, made to hold off the usury that weighed on small growers. Before sowing, the farmers borrowed the seed, and gave it back straight after the harvest. At Barrali the monte granatico stood in what is now via Roma, and the building was still there in the middle of the last century. The arms, granted in 1992, are an inventory of the land: an orange tree with nine gold fruits and two grazing sheep, and a mandarin tree with another nine, with a black goat. The name may come from «a barralis», the pergola-trained vines that were grown here.
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📅 Every year, on 13 December (and the first Sunday of July)
Barrali celebrates its patroness Saint Lucy twice a year, on 13 December and on the first Sunday of July; the town is known throughout Sardinia for the Sagra del pane bread festival.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Barrali, but an easy day trip away.
