San Basilio

The name of this village comes from a reused building. The legend has it that it was given by Byzantine monks, followers of Saint Basil the Great, archbishop of Caesarea, who reused the Roman baths that stood here and built a monastery on top of them; in the Middle Ages the place was called Sanctu Basili de Montis, and in Sardinian the name has stayed exactly that, Santu 'Asili 'e Monti. The baths are still there: they were built not before the second century after Christ, with frigidarium, tepidarium, calidarium and laconicum, and they consist of a central apsed chamber eight metres long and three wide, divided into three rooms, of a second space like a little rectangular house with most of its roof collapsed, and of a third which still has its roof. In the uncovered room a small fresco can be seen that shows a starry sky. The complex, used by the monks as the base of their monastery, was rediscovered only at the beginning of the third millennium.

The sky, in this territory, has come back: inside the comune of San Basilio stands the Sardinia Radio Telescope, inaugurated in 2013, one of the most important radio telescopes in Italy, run by the national institute of astrophysics. Before that there was water: the territory is full of springs, and there are two nuragic sacred wells, Bau Crabas I and II, a little over a hundred metres apart — a closeness that suggests an important centre of the cult of water. The most imposing nuraghe is Sa domu 'e s'Orcu, so called probably for its very size. The village was redeemed from the Da Silva Alagon in 1839, with the end of the feudal system; in May of 1928 the comune of Goni was merged into it, and was then reconstituted in 1945. Of the parish church of San Pietro Apostolo little is known, because a fire destroyed the parish archives. And in early February they run sa cursa de sa pudda, a contest among horsemen much like the Sartiglia of Oristano, except that instead of the star you catch a wooden hen.