A basalt tower from the sixteenth century BC, four corner towers, and around them a village of circular huts: Su Nuraxi is the capital of the Nuragic civilisation, excavated in the 1950s by Giovanni Lilliu — archaeology's "sardus pater" — and UNESCO-listed since 1997. Visits are guided only, descending into the courtyard and climbing the tower: a thousand years of prehistory touched by hand.
Next door, the Casa Zapata museum shows another nuraghe beneath the glass floors of a baronial palace.
Our tip: tours leave every half hour but summer queues stretch: go in the morning. The Giara plateau with its wild ponies, ten minutes away, completes a Marmilla day.
