Guspini

Guspini is a town where two worlds were welded together, and you can hear the weld when people speak. From the middle of the nineteenth century its history is the history of the Montevecchio mines, which yielded lead and zinc, and with the mines came workers from every part of Sardinia: the Campidanese of Guspini shifted to take them in, and the local speech still carries the marks of that mixing. Beside Montevecchio stand the other galleries, closed now, Piccalinna, Sant'Antonio, Sciria, Casargiu, Sanna, Telle: names that weigh here as much as those of the districts.

Before the lead there was everything else. The sacred well of Sa Mitza de Nieddinu has lost its tholos roof but keeps almost intact the flight of nine steps that goes down to the water; more than thirty nuraghes stand in the territory, and towards the sea lies the Phoenician, Punic and Roman site of Neapolis. The church of Santa Maria di Malta is Romanesque and begins in the tenth century, when it was part of a convent of monks of the Greek-Byzantine rite. On the slopes of Monte Santa Margherita sits sa rocca incuaddigada, the mounted rock: in 1950 vandals sent the boulder that crowned it rolling down the valley.