THE LOSA AND SANTU ANTINE NURAGHI
THE nuraghi of Sardinia are so numerous that the non-archaeologist will only have the appetite for a selection. Of the three most impressive, two, the Losa and Santu Antine nuraghi, are some forty kilometres apart and both in earshot of the Strada Carlo Felice, the main road from Cagliari to Sassari.
Despite the proximity of the road both sites are more atmospheric than their counterpart, the Nuraghe Su Nuraxi (see no. 97). The great triangular basalt tower of the Nuraghe Losa, near Abbasanta, datable to the first half of the second millennium BC, now gilded with lichen, rises above the splendid defensive wall of the former town, which was reconstructed in the seventh century BC. The carefully battered tower was protected by three Late Bronze Age lower towers; that to the south masked the main entrance. Passages led to tholoi, in the flanking angles, and to the central chamber, off which there are three circular projections; just before this is entered, a flight of steps, with sides like those of the other passages tapering to the top, climbs to a second tholos above the first, and then to a third (of which only the lower part survives). The external masonry is beautifully graded and eloquent of the engineering ability of the builders. The nuraghe was a formidable place of strength and refuge, and it is hardly surprising to learn that it continued to be used until the early medieval period.
The Nuraghe Santu Antine near Torralba is similar in many ways. The central tower, variously dated to the late ninth or eighth century BC and still over seventeen metres high, is set within a lower triangular outwork, with a projection at the centre of one side, strengthening the entrance passage to the courtyard within, which has been variously thought to be part of the original complex or an early addition. At either end of the court are openings to the tholoi in the angle towers, from which corridors lit by narrow openings in the outer wall lead to the tholos in the third angle, and subsidiary passages behind the angle towers. In the centre, the lower part of the wall of the central tower is exposed. The entrance leads to the impressive central tholos, which is surrounded by a circular passage except where stairs rise to a second, lower, tholos, and then to a third, of which only the lower courses survive. The masonry is of conspicuously fine calibre, with for the most part regular courses of carefully graded blocks, of which some thirty survive. And the detail, for instance the narrow outer faces of the window openings, is remarkably consistent. No wonder the place has come to be known as the ‘Reggia nuragica’. Echoed to the south by the fine unrestored Nuraghe Oes hard by the railway line (take a torch!), the fortress dominates the so-called Valle dei Nuraghi, a natural amphitheatre that must long have known a gentle prosperity.
Nuraghe Losa.
One wonders what was made of the nuraghi by the medieval bishops of Torres, whose beautiful church of San Pietro di Sorres on the ridge above Torralba was built between 1170 and 1190 under Pistoiese rather than Pisan influence. This boasts perhaps the most satisfying of all Sardinian Romanesque façades.
Few modern roads – even in a country with so consistent an interest in road construction as Italy – are so memorable as that from the Abbasanta turn near the Nuraghe Losa through the hills to Olbia. A series of monuments that enrich our understanding of both prehistoric and medieval Sardinia are within easy reach: the solemn basalt church at Ottana, which retains a mid-fourteenth-century Pisan polyptych; a cluster of rock-cut tombs, Sas Còncas, half a kilometre from the turn for Oniferi; and, to the south of the turn for Lula and Dorgali, two exemplary monuments of the world of the nuraghi. Some four kilometres from the turn, on the left of the road as this rises, is the path to the Tomb of the Giant Sa Ena ’e Thòmes. The central monolith of this long barrow was carved to leave a raised border and central band; below is the small arched entrance to the tomb chamber. The tomb is better preserved than its counterparts at Arzachena and much more appealing as, lizards apart, it is likely to be deserted. Continue onwards towards Dorgali for a further four kilometres for the entrance to Serra Orrios, the best-preserved nuragic village, with groups of round structures and two shrines of the Late Bronze Age. Alas, we know nothing of the religion practised here, but the charm of the site, shaded by olive trees, is not in doubt.