Vallermosa

Vallermosa did not grow of itself: it was founded. The date can be fixed with reasonable certainty at 1645, by the will of Biagio Alagon, marquis of Villasor, who wanted it on a fertile plain at the foot of the hills. The name was Spanish and said exactly why it stood there: Villahermosa, beautiful town, and in Sardinian the place is still called Biddaramosa. Farming families came first, then families from the Nuoro highlands, from Aritzo and Desulo, who came down here for the winter because their own was too harsh; most of them stayed the whole year, without giving up their own customs. In 1745 the town was incorporated into the marquisate of Villahermosa and Santa Croce, and it passed at last to the Manca, from whom it bought itself free in 1839. Use has worn the town's name down to Vallermosa, but the descendants of those lords still carry it whole in their surname: Manca di Villahermosa.

The land around is far older than the town. At Matzanni there are three sacred wells, the remains of thirteen huts, a long stretch of walling and the ruins of a Punic temple; a kilometre from the houses a small Romanesque church stands beside a set of Roman baths, and the two buildings look at each other across a thousand years. In the town the old Campidano houses of clay brick can still be made out, with wide doorways built for carts to pass through, and at the centre is the church of San Lucifero, whose feast falls on the twentieth of May. A little beyond begins the area of Gutturu Mannu, the great gorge, rich in springs and in species that have almost vanished elsewhere.