Barumini – Su Nuraxi

SU NURAXI
the past

Built in the final Bronze Age, between the 12th and 11th centuries BC, on a hill that culminates at an altitude of 238 m and dominates a wide and fertile plain, the nuraghe of Su Nuraxi was built entirely in large blocks of basalt. The first structure consisted of a central conical tower, 18.60 m high, equipped with three overlapping vaulted chambers connected by a spiral staircase. This first structure was later joined by four towers connected by a curtain wall with an upper gallery, which formed an internal courtyard to which gave access only a narrow door, later walled up: it was no longer possible to access the fortress except by a staircase, controlled from the inside. In the Iron Age (9th-8th century BC), at the time of the beginning of the Phoenician, then Carthaginian invasions, the whole site was further fortified by a new wall. From the thirteenth to the sixth century BC, a Nuragic village had developed around this fortification, with 50 to 200 circular huts whose interior plan,  initially simple, was later divided into various functional spaces. Built in dry-stone, they were covered with a conical roof; one of them, for its size and its articulation, seems to refer to the head of the community, or to the assemblies of the inhabitants, who celebrated their cults there. The village, whose population was estimated between 100 and 1000 inhabitants, was equipped in the 9th-8th centuries BC with internal roads and a sewer system. Partially destroyed by the Carthaginians in the VI century B.C., the village and its fortress were later reoccupied until the Roman conquest in the II century BC, before being definitively abandoned in the 3rd century, at the end of an almost continuous occupation lasting about 1500 years.