Things to See in Barumini | 2 Monuments & Landmarks

All the monuments in Barumini

The landmarks and masterpieces worth planning a day around.

The basalt central tower of Su Nuraxi, Sardinia's great Bronze Age fortress

Archaeological siteUNESCOSu Nuraxi di BaruminiGreatest nuraghe complex, Bronze Age tower village, dry-stone corbelling, Giovanni Lilliu's excavationBronze 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.Plan the visit

Pozzo sacro di Funtana CobertaHidden GemFuntana CobertaNuragic sacred well, twelve-step staircase, false dome, water worshipFuntana Coberta, the ‘covered fountain’, is one of the best-preserved Nuragic sacred wells in Sardinia. Built between the thirteenth and ninth centuries BC over a spring near Ballao, in the Gerrei hills, it follows the classic three-part plan of a small open vestibule, a stone staircase of twelve steps beneath a covered roof of lintels, and a round chamber with a false dome about 5.5 meters high, above a well shaft five meters deep. The Nuragic people worshipped water here, and excavations found bronze swords, oxhide-shaped ingots and bronze statuettes. Excavations started in 1918 under Antonio Taramelli and resumed in 1994 and 2008. Today a steel grille protects the well.

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