Patron saint festival In 329 days
Our Lady of Montserrat, patron of Burcei
📅 Every year, on 8 September
Burcei celebrates Our Lady of Montserrat on 8 September.
Burcei has 2,896 inhabitants in the mountains north-east of Cagliari, and it is one of the youngest villages in Sardinia: it was born towards the end of the seventeenth century, when groups of shepherds, mainly from Sinnai, Settimo San Pietro and Villasalto, settled here and put up the first houses. The name says the same thing, since it probably comes from the Sardinian burrei, meaning a herd of oxen or of cows. Today Burcei is known as the village of cherries, and the coat of arms sets the two economies side by side: the cherries and the goat. Next to them is a thorn branch with five silver flowers, which plays on the name of the Malaspina.
The surprise of the village is the parish church. Nostra Signora di Monserrato was built in 1886 to a design by Gaetano Cima, the Cagliari architect who brought neoclassicism to Sardinia, and it has an octagonal plan: an unusual shape anywhere, and an unexpected one in a village that two centuries earlier had been a shepherds' camp. All around, the territory is scattered with nuraghi, from Bruncu su Entosu to su Nuraxi, because this mountain was inhabited long before anyone came up to build houses on it.
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Burcei 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Burcei
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Burcei, but an easy day trip away.
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola 📍 Carpi · 11 km Jesuit church of 1670-1682 in Carpi, on a Greek-cross plan, with scagliola altars and the diocesan museum. Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta 📍 Carpi · 11 km Carpi cathedral begun in 1514 to Peruzzi's design, reopened in 2017 after the 2012 earthquake. Chiesa di Santa Maria in Castello 📍 Carpi · 12 km Romanesque pieve of 1184, the oldest church in Carpi, with a Peruzzi façade and twelfth-century frescoes. Chiesa di San Bernardino da Siena 📍 Carpi · 12 km Patron church of Carpi, begun in 1604, with the reliquary bust of Saint Bernardino of Siena.