Soleminis

In 1637 Francesco Vico bought for thirty thousand lire a piece of land on which nobody lived. Soleminis was already mentioned in the eleventh century, had belonged to the giudicato of Cagliari and then to Arborea and to Pisa, and after the Aragonese conquest had passed from one Iberian lord to another until, in the fifteenth century, it emptied completely. With the ground Vico also obtained the title of marquis of Soleminis: he bought, that is, the name of a village that no longer existed. Then he made it over to his nephew, and it was the nephew who put people back inside it. The repopulation did not last long, because in 1652 came the plague that struck the whole island. A few years later they began again, and this time it worked: franchises were granted, and the exemptions drew new settlers.

The marquisate stayed in the family until 1812, when it passed by succession to the Amat di San Filippo; from them the town bought itself free in 1839, with the abolition of the feudal system, and began to govern itself. Of what was here before all this buying and selling there remain the archaeological areas of Facc'e 'Idda, Is Calitas and Cuccuru Cresia Arta, which speak of a human presence far older and far more continuous than the marquises. Today the work is the vine and then the olive, with some poultry farming, and the feast most felt after the patron's is that of Sant'Isidoro, which brings with it a broad-bean festival. On the south-western edge is the halt of the railway to Isili.