Villanova Tulo

The name holds two villages together. In the giudicale period Villanova and Tulo were two separate villae of the giudicato of Cagliari, in the curatoria of Siurgus; between 1365 and 1409, with the war between the Aragonese kingdom of Sardinia and the giudicato of Arborea, the territory changed hands more than once, and the present village took shape about the middle of the 14th century, almost certainly to repopulate the land of the old ones. Under the Aragonese, in 1604, it entered the county of Mandas held by the Carroz; with the Ladrón the fief became the duchy of Mandas in 1614, and from 1777 it belonged to the Tellez Girón until the redemption of 1839. The Sardinian spoken here is southern Barbagian Campidanese.

Provinces, on the other hand, Villanova Tulo has changed three times in fifteen years. It was in the province of Nuoro; the regional law of 12 July 2001, which created the new Sardinian provinces, would have assigned it to the Medio Campidano, where it never actually arrived: a second law, of 13 October 2003, sent it to Cagliari instead, and there it stayed until the reform of 2016. Today it is in Sud Sardegna. The village lies between 550 and 600 metres, and the highest point of its territory is Perda Lobina, at 857. Three kilometres to the south, the station on the Mandas-Arbatax line has since 1997 served only the Trenino Verde.