Special thread about the festival held in Iglesias each October for the festivity of the Virgin of Buon Cammino.
📸 Countryside church of Our Lady of Buon Cammino
The Ottobrata is my favourite festival, so here is a special thread about it. Religious festivals are typical Sardinian tradition, calling people from all around the neighbouring areas to celebrate. This happen(ed) every year in Iglesias, where the streets filled with stalls-
-selling toasted chickpeas (I can't tell you how good and addicting they are), nougat, or setting up games, or trying to sell old objects... Recently, a new event was added, sa Sortija of Iglesias, rediscovered from old documents in the archive ⬇️
But where does the cult come from? There are many churches in Sardinia which bear that dedication but the origin is not certain. Some say it could date back to Byzantine times, others say that the churches could indicate a favourable pathway (good path=Buon Cammino).
The church of Iglesias is built on top of the highest hill of the town, outside the old city walls, and for this reason it's a countryside church. The cult existed already in the XVII century but there's no mention in the medieval codex.
The recent history began when a citizen, Antioco Bernardini, was falsely accused of committing some crimes. He took the vow to go up the hill and light a candle in the chapel every week, if he were freed of the accusations, as it happened.
During one of these pilgrimages-
-the candle sent the entire chapel on fire. Therefore in 1777, the same Bernardini built a new church and started the tradition of celebrating the Virgin every third Sunday of October.
This old church became run-down with time and in the middle of the last century-
-it was necessary to have it rebuilt, and this is the one standing now.
The original church was only the section to the extreme left while the other sections, added later, are the monastery of the cloistered nuns of Saint Claire.
The Ottobrata Iglesiente remains the biggest celebration of the town, where it's called "Festa Manna", big festival.
It's also my favourite church because I can see it from my house (actually you can basically see it from everywhere in the town), and the festival falls in October (just like my birthday), which is the best month ever 🍁
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Thread about the most peculiar Sardinian culture, lasting several millennia and still largely unknown.
📸 Modern representation of a nuraghe
▪️ Timeline. The Nuragic period covers a millennium and a half and roughly divided in:
Nuragic I 1800-1450 BCE (Bronze Age)
Nuragic II 1450-1200 BCE
Nuragic III 1200-900 BCE
Nuragic IV 900-500 BCE (Iron Age)
Nuragic V 500-200 BCE (interaction with Punics)
▪️The name. We don't know for sure how the Nuragic people called themselves. The first mention of the inhabitants/island comes from the stele of Nora, written in Phoenician, and says SHRDN.
Nuragic derives instead from Nuraghes, the name of the most characteristic construction.
This thread follows the introductory part regarding Prenuragic cultures. You may want to check that one first, if you didn't already.
Domus de janas (=houses of the fairies) are old tombs typical of the Culture of Ozieri in Sardinia. They get their name from the Sardinian folk tale that wants small fairies (janas) to inhabit them.
They are excavated in the rock and count up to 2,400+ in the whole --
-Island, not considering the ones which are still unknown. They were collective tombs, as the findings confirmed. Each domus could have several rooms, even consecutive, all of them accessible through a very small hole. Two of the biggest ones (Anghelu Ruju near Alghero ⬇️ and-
First thread regarding the history of Prenuragic Sardinia. Next part will be about the domus de janas.
The first human remains in Sardinia date back to the Mesolithic Age, that is 10,000-6,000 BCE, and found mostly in caves.
Around the 6,000BCE, the first Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe, bringing the tradition of agriculture and stationary life.
In the early Neolithic, we find corded ware in Sardinia too and a thorough use of the obsidian, precious stone found in great measure around Monte Arci. Sardinians traded it and created fine blades, with little effort to find the first matter.
**GRAZIA DELEDDA – 150° anniversary of her birth**
Thread about the only Italian woman writer to have been awarded the Nobel prize in literature, and she was Sardinian.
Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro on September 27, 1871. Nuoro is a town of central Sardinia, in the region where traditions are more radicated in the culture and society, but between the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX, Nuoro was a town with great artistic-
-and literary fervour. Grazia was born in a middle-class family; her father was an educated man who had also been major of Nuoro. Grazia attended only primary school, had private lessons on humanistic subjects and then carried ahead self-taught.
Thread about the most famous nuraghe of Sardinia and its village, UNESCO world heritage site in Barumini.
Barumini rises in the fertile land of Marmilla, historically known for the cultivation of wheat from prehistoric times to Middle Age and still today. The nuraghe rises near the medieval castle of Las Plassas.
The area was inhabited since a very long time but the nuraghe-
-was at some point covered in mud. It looked like a peculiar hill, very regular. It was in the '40s of last century that Giovanni Lilliu began the works for its recovery, pulling out something much bigger than expected.
The area is filled with many other nuraghes and findings-
A thread about the old tradition of wines in Sardinia.
Findings in archaeological sites show that Ancient Sardinians produced wines already in Nuragic times, several centuries BCE. Following contacts (with Phoenicians) and dominations (by the Romans) kept the tradition alive and with new introductions and techniques.
Nuragic civilisations were one of the first to produce wine in the western Mediterranean.
We didn't fall under Arab rule and the production of wines increased in Middle Age, where we have several documents talking about wines and vineyards. The typical Sardinian technique-