Senorbì

In the fields of Senorbì was found the Mater Mediterranea, a Cycladic idol of the third millennium before Christ representing the mother goddess: proof that this countryside was already trading with the most advanced civilisations of the Mediterranean. From the nuragic age comes instead the bronze known as the Miles Cornutus, today in the national archaeological museum of Cagliari. A couple of kilometres from the town lies the necropolis of Monte Luna, a good hundred and twenty Carthaginian tombs cut by the people of the Punic settlement that arose at the end of the sixth century before Christ on the hill of Santu Teru. And near the hamlet of Sisini stands Su Nuraxi, which has little of a nuraghe about it: its plan is the unusual one of the well temples, and its size is considerable, nearly eighteen metres by twelve.

The name of the town appears in written documents only from the twelfth century. When the giudicato of Cagliari fell, in 1258, the Trexenta passed briefly to Arborea, and in 1295 the judge Mariano the Second left it by will to the republic of Pisa; in 1324 the Aragonese arrived, but on 25 April 1326, after the second peace treaty between Aragon and Pisa, the district was left in fief to that same Tuscan city, which went on administering it until at least 1365. The hardest blow came with the plague of 1681: out of about five hundred inhabitants, a hundred and twenty-eight died. The same plague killed the neighbouring village of Segolaj outright, and its last inhabitants moved here: of their community there remains the small Romanesque church of Santa Maria della Neve, of the thirteenth century. In 1943 American aircraft bombed the town because there were German camps in the countryside, and during the raids the young Antonio Porqueddu was killed. Today Senorbì, the main centre of the Trexenta, is a rare case among the inland comuni of Sardinia: it grows, by births and by arrivals, because young couples from the villages around come to live here.