Sardinia it is a museum
under the open sky.
Among the various remains
of civilizations
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| The
"Palazzo di Re Barbaro" |
that came one after
the other, there are not only nuraghes, that anyway are the symbol
itself of island's history, but also remains
of more recent civilizations as the Phoenician, Carthaginian and
Roman ones. At Porto Torres we can find the most significant evidence
of Roman domination; Romans were on the island since 226 b.c. when
Sardinia became province of Rome triggering off a century of fighting
and rebellions among wich we remember that one of the Carthaginian
immigrant Amsicora in 216 b.c. At the end of II century b.c. Caesar
grant Cagliari Roman civil rights, while Porto Torres (at that time
called Turris Libisonis), became a colony. Romans stayed on the
island for about a thousand years (then much beyond the downfall
of Roman empire), leaving as a cosequence, inerasable signs, also
in the language. The archaeologic remains at Porto Torres date the
1st century b.c.; they are made up by ruins of a Roman town, by
a bridge with 7 vaults over the stream Rio Mannu, 135 mt.long, by
ruins of the port and of a waterworks and by the three thermal resorts,
the main important of wich is known as Palazzo
di Re Barbaro, with porticos and columns
that run along a paved road and where you can admire the vestiges
of great rooms with mosaic floors.
At Porto Torres there are also the the remains of San
Gavino necropolis. Always
in the Nurra (the North-West zone of Sardinia) let's move towards
Alghero where we find the most important and large necropolis
of Sardinia. The Anghelu
Ruju necropolis
is an example of the "Domus de Janas" (literally "House
of fairies") that Sardinia is reach of. This necropolis was
discovered in 1903 while digging the foundation of a building
in the Sella e Mosca territory. In 1904
Antonio Taramelli director of Sardinian Antiquities Office started
first excavations; other two important moments were the following
excavations of 1936 by Doro Levi and of 1967 with E. Contu. In
those years the area where is the necropolis was given by Sella
e Mosca to the public administration. The total numer of tombs
of this necropolis is 38. All the most important findings of these
tombs are now in the National Museum of Cagliari.
Domus de janas main peculiarity is of not being a building, but
an excavation in the rocks; in this case the findings proved that
the necropolis was initially digged and then modified during a
period of 1500 years, from 3500 to 2000 b.c.
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