At Serrenti they build in two opposite ways. The town has quarries of excellent trachyte, and with that stone were made in Cagliari the courthouse, the old market and the façade of the San Michele cemetery. The local tradition, however, is made of the other material, raw earth: since 2013 the LAT, Laboratorio Arti della Terra — in Sardinian Domu in Ladiri, the house of raw bricks — has hosted the degree course in raw-earth architecture and sustainable development run by the UNESCO chair of the university of Cagliari. The town stands on a barely raised plateau, where the plain of the Campidano begins to break into low hills: at the boundary with Furtei the Mediterranean scrub takes the place of the wheat and the vines.
The territory was inhabited in the nuragic age — the nuraghi of Bruncu Su Castiu, Monti Mannu, Genna Serrenti and Cuccuru Turri remain — and in Roman times, with the ruins of villages at Gutturrosa, Sa Conca Manna and Santus Angius. In the Middle Ages Serrenti belonged to the giudicato of Cagliari, in the curatoria of Nuraminis; when the giudicato fell, in 1258, it passed to the Pisans and around 1355 to the Aragonese, who made it the fief of Francesco di Valguarnera. When that house died out, in 1436, the village passed through the hands of several families, down to the Simon and the Ricca di Castelvecchio, who held it in 1736 and from whom it was redeemed in 1839, when feudalism was abolished. In the fields they grow durum wheat, tomatoes and artichokes, and for some years now asparagus too. Every first Monday of October the town celebrates saint Vitalia, in Sardinian Santa Vida, co-patron of the parish since 2017.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Serrenti
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
