Bronze Age Sardinians built some seven thousand nuraghi, cone-shaped stone towers, and Su Nuraxi is the grandest that survives: a central keep raised around 1500 BCE, ringed a few centuries later by four corner towers and an outer wall, with a village of round huts spreading beyond it.
The whole complex lay buried under a hill until the archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu excavated it between 1949 and the mid-1950s, uncovering corbelled chambers built without mortar that still hold. Who built the nuraghi, and whether they were forts, granaries, or chieftains' seats, is still debated. UNESCO listed the site in 1997. Visits are guided only, in groups leaving every half hour, and involve some clambering over uneven basalt, so wear real shoes.
