In the Pal'e Pardu district there survive a few remains of a protonuraghe, one of the oldest kinds of building on the island: a pit with boulders holding up the walls and a covering of earth on top. Since the type was little known, for years it was taken for a collapsed tower nuraghe, and when the road was built alongside it they took it apart to use its stones. The giants' tomb of San Cosimo fared better, brought to light in the excavations of the early nineteen-eighties: it is among the largest in Sardinia. On a hill, over the remains of a Roman necropolis, stands the country church of Santa Severa, which some scholars date back to the palaeochristian period.
In the centuries when other villages round about were emptying out until they disappeared, Gonnosfanadiga prospered: in the nineteenth century, out of seven hundred families, only 35 owned no land. They farmed, they raised animals, and they exported cheeses, meat, fruit, flax and cloth. Then came the war: on 17 February 1943 the village was bombed by the Americans, and the civilian dead were more than a hundred, with dozens injured. It is a thing that here has never stopped being told.
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📅 Every year, on 4 December
Gonnosfanadiga celebrates Saint Barbara on 4 December, in the church dedicated to her; on the last Sunday of May, the Madonna della Salute is also celebrated, with a procession of horses, tractors and traccas carts.
📅 Every year, on the last Sunday of May, since 1849, with horses, tractors and traccas carts
Gonnosfanadiga celebrates the Madonna della Salute on the last Sunday of May: instituted in 1849, the feast features a procession of horses, tractors and decorated traccas carts, followed at night by fireworks.
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 Gonnosfanadiga, but an easy day trip away.
