Domus de Maria

In 1578 the viceroy De Moncada ordered a tower to be built at the mouth of the rio di Chia, thirteen metres high and ten across at the base. It was not built to defend a town, because there was no town: it was built because the pirates put in there to take on fresh water. It was a torre de armas, with cannon and a small garrison always present, and it stayed in service until the twentieth century — in its last years the customs guard held it. It was restored between 1988 and the early nineties. The village below it is younger than the tower: Domus de Maria was born in the seventeen hundreds, when the Piarist fathers settled here together with a group of families from the neighbouring territories, who had moved to escape those very raids.

The hill on which the tower stands had held a city. Bithia, Phoenician, is thought to go back to about seven hundred and fifty years before Christ, and it is known above all for what has come out of its necropolis and its tofet; there is a Punic temple on the islet of Su Cardolinu, and near the beach of Sa Colonia the remains of houses and of another temple, dedicated to Bes. Older still are the nuraghi, and the local account lists them one by one with whatever makes each recognisable: Sa Peldaia, which has the shape of an igloo; Su Brabudu, with its two-lobed plan; Is Orbais, with its fine architrave. Behind, at about eight hundred metres, stretches the forest of Is Cannoneris, one of the largest holm-oak woods in Europe. And at Pentecost the village holds a festival that has been going on for a long time and counts it: that of the Holy Spirit, which lasts five days and has reached its two hundred and twenty-third edition.