Villacidro is one of the clearest cases in Italy of a town built onto the shape of the ground: the old core stands high up, at the mouth of the Castangias valley, and the part that grew later spread along the alluvial fan, arranging itself exactly like the debris the torrent has laid down there for millennia. In the Middle Ages it was called Xedri de Leni and belonged to the judgedom of Cagliari; today's name is explained by villa and cedro, the citron that was perhaps grown in these parts. In Sardinian, however, Villacidro is above all sa bidda de is cogas: the village of the witches.
The most surprising thing to see is a wash-house. Inaugurated in 1893 to a design by the engineer Enrico Pani, it is an Art Nouveau structure with a great sheet-metal roof carried on twenty-two cast iron columns, beneath which stand thirty-six basins lined with trachyte. On the main front there is a fountain with marble sculptures: the two mermaids, the lion and the lioness were stolen in the post-war years, the angel faces remain. Just outside the town the Coxinas torrent makes the three leaps of the Sa Spendula waterfall, which Gabriele D'Annunzio, passing through, put into a poem.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 4 December; in January the blessing of animals for Saint Anthony, in June the Cherry Festival
Villacidro celebrates Saint Barbara on 4 December; for the feast of Saint Anthony, protector of animals, the celebration closes on the parish church square with the blessing of animals and the distribution of blessed bread. June brings the Cherry Festival.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Villacidro, but an easy day trip away.
