Pabillonis has 2,948 inhabitants in the plain of the Campidano, near the point where the Flumini Mannu and the Flumini Bellu meet. The name comes from the Latin papilio, the pavilion: they were the Roman military camps pitched here, and in the documents of the peace between Aragon and Arborea of 1388 the village is still called Paviglionis. The old settlement stood a couple of kilometres away, on the banks of the river Ptolemy called Rivus Sacer, the sacred river; of that place there remain the little church of San Lussorio, a nuraghe and a Roman bridge that is still standing and that here they call su ponti de sa baronessa.
The old village was destroyed by the Saracens and rebuilt where it is now, but that was not enough: in 1584 another sack came, and the historian Vittorio Angius writes that the raiders were led there by a Sardinian renegade, and that those who could not flee were killed or carried off as slaves. The village was left empty. Much later, in 1934, the marshes around the Flumini Mannu were drained; and in the first days of September 1943 the Pabillonis airfield was bombed by 112 Allied aircraft. It was the last act of the war in Sardinia: a few hours later Badoglio announced that Italy was leaving the conflict.
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📅 Every year, on 5 August; Saint Anthony the Abbot and the bonfire on 16 January
Pabillonis celebrates Our Lady of the Snows on 5 August, in the church dedicated to her. On 16 January, Saint Anthony the Abbot is celebrated, with a great nocturnal bonfire called in Sardinian Su Fogadoni.
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 Pabillonis, but an easy day trip away.
