Nuragus

The village carries the name of what surrounds it: the nuraghi. The volunteers of a local association counted thirty-nine of them in the territory, which is small, and the most important is Santu Millanu, with its central tower still high and four corner towers; around it one can see the traces of the village of huts, with rooms built over them in the Roman age. Not far off is the sacred well of Coni, small but carefully cut, with squared basalt blocks forming the tholos and the steps: inside it a bronze statuette was found, a female figure with a flared skirt, which they call the praying matriarch. And in 1857 a plough, at the foot of a demolished nuraghe that here they called Serra Ilixi, turned up five oxhide copper ingots: they had come from the eastern Mediterranean, probably from Cyprus, and today they are in the archaeological museum of Cagliari.

When the village was born no document says, and so tradition remains, which here is still alive: Nuragus is said to have formed from the survivors of the Roman city of Valentia, capital of the Valentini, recalled in Ptolemy's itinerary and destroyed, according to some, by the Vandals. Those who escaped are said to have gathered near the nuraghe Santu Stevuni, at the spot still called Su Pinnatzu. The name of that city survived in any case: in the middle ages the village belonged to the Giudicato of Arborea and lay in the curatoria of Parte Valenza. The first document is of 11 July 1224, when pope Honorius III confirmed to the archbishop of Oristano the privileges over several parishes, among them that of Nuragus with the church of Santo Stefano. After the battle of Sanluri, in 1409, the Aragonese came; the fief then passed from hand to hand down to the Aymerich, from whom it was redeemed in 1839.