Sardinia: Island of Myth and Magic

By Edward Burman

An exploration of Sardinia's incredibly rich history and culture, which stretches back to the Neolithic period.

This book details everyone from the Phoenicians to the Carthaginians and Aragonese who invaded Sardinia, which is covered with some of the most fascinating historical and archaeological sites in Europe – from thousands of nuraghi, Bronze Age towers and settlements, to 'giant's grave' and 'fairy house' tombs. It also holds eccentric festivals, from Barbagia's carnival parade of ghoulish mamuthones, said to banish winter demons, to the death-defying S'Ardia horse race in Sedilo.

There are shipwrecks off Cagliari's coast, underwater caves and submerged Roman ruins in addition to ancient castles, churches, undisturbed hilltop villages and 2,000 miles of some of the most beautiful coastline in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jun 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781786725998

Edward Burman

Edward Burman grew up in Cambridge and studied Philosophy and Fine Art at the University of Leeds in the UK. He lived in Rome for three years, where he studied art, learnt Italian, and wrote articles for the local English-language newspaper. He then lived in Tehran, where he worked as an editor and became fascinated by the country's history and literature. Back in Italy, Burman wrote various books on occult subjects and Italian culture and taught in the universities of L'Aquila and Bologna.

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Contents

     Introduction

  1 Into Sardinia: Bosa and Oristano

  2 Tharros and Cabras

  3 Antas

  4 Cagliari

  5 Barumini–Gavoi/Fonni–Nuoro

  6 Nuoro to Olbia

  7 Olbia–Arzachena–Caprera

  8 Tempio Pausania–Castelsardo–Porto ­Torres–Stintino–Asinara

  9 Sassari

10 Alghero

     Epilogue: A Final Word

Acknowledgements

A note on the photographs

suggested further reading

Index

Plates

Introduction

Rarely has a people been so intimately related to its landscape as in Sardinia. Isolated, distant in spirit, the island’s mountains and seas have provided sustenance, legends and magic since the earliest Neolithic cultures developed there 8,000 years ago. Mountains had thrown up boulders which were now fashioned into the towers known as nuraghi that still dot the landscape, and also provided the lead, copper, gold, silver and other minerals that generated wealth through mining for at least 5,000 years. Sea and lagoons offered abundant fish, the mountain pastures wool and cheese, the hills wine and olives, the plains wheat; the land was geologically stable, the weather in balance with human needs and no dangerous animals threatened the lives of the people; maritime routes brought trade and exchange with the Eastern Mediterranean, both in foodstuffs and in art.

Yet this magical landscape was fraught with danger.

The inhabitants of Sardinia have endured a series of invaders and rulers from Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Saracens, Aragonese, Pisans and Spanish to the Savoyard dukes who turned themselves into kings of Italy by the ruse of first becoming kings of Sardinia. Indigenous Sards were pushed inland by invaders who occupied the coastal areas, seeking personal islands of refuge in the harsh landscape; until the twentieth century, the people around Nuoro lived beyond the reach of carabinieri in clusters of houses high in the mountains, which from a distance resemble vertical islands. ‘If Sardinia is an island’, one of its most famous natives, the politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci, wrote, ‘then every Sardinian is an island within the island’ (Se la Sardegna è un’isola, ogni sardo è un’isola nell ’isola).¹ This is further illustrated by an autobiographical novel written as the traditional pastoral way of life on the island was coming to an end in the 1970s, Padre padrone by Gavino Ledda. Heartrending descriptions of the hardships of life in the hills for an illiterate 5-year-old shepherd (who only learned to read in his twenties) with a ferocious father (the padrone of the title) – who beats him and lashes him with a belt for the slightest error – are punctuated by recovery from an episode of pneumonia. Surprisingly, after a month at home with his mother in the village the boy is anxious to return to their hillside hut; the narrator reflects that

the solitude of the forest and the deep silence of the environs, interrupted only by wind, thunder or distant storms in the winter, orchestrated by the singing of birds and nature basking in the spring, was no longer silence for me. By listening to it I had learned to understand it, and it had become a secret language by which everything seemed to me animated, speaking and in movement … It was as if I knew all the dialects of nature [author’s italics], and spoke them well enough to set up with nature the only conversations that were possible for me.²

Sea, mountains, wind, rain, flora and fauna were sentient in the shepherd boy’s mind. They constituted his private island within the island.

The sensitive and vibrant culture of Sardinia has always been overlooked in favour of its neighbour Sicily: in part because for over 2,000 years the island was afflicted in summer by endemic malaria; in part because for centuries superior road networks made Sicily more accessible. That has changed dramatically in modern times.

In the first case, several prominent ancient writers used the collective term intemperie to refer to malaria, various fevers and other diseases such as tuberculosis which were rampant in the hot summer season, especially near the lagoons – hence the explicit reference to weather, tempo, and intemperie as maltempo or bad weather. The Roman orator Cicero referred to the Sardinian poet and singer Tigellius as ‘a fellow who is even more pestilent than the country he comes from’.³ Later, the poet and satirist Martial went even further when he used the word ‘Sardinia’ as a synonym for death:

In no spot canst thou shut out fate; when death comes

even in Tibur’s midst is a Sardinia.⁴

This reputation stuck among those who knew the classics, meaning just about everyone who was literate and might want to visit the island, and it was only after the provision of free quinine reduced the danger of malaria in the first half of the twentieth century that conditions improved and the number of visitors increased. Then, with a controversial project financed by the Rockefeller Foundation after the Second World War, DDT was used to eradicate the mosquitos responsible for spreading the disease.

In the second case, with intemperie conquered, the advent of high-speed ferries and low-cost flights, the appeal of luxury beach resorts on the east coast, and the development of advanced telecommunications and Internet services – in which Sardinia has been at the forefront in a conscious attempt to minimize isolation – brought radical improvements in the economy. Its once little-known wines and cheeses are now easily found elsewhere, such as Cannonau and pecorino sardo. Alghero, Cagliari and Olbia feature on flight destination boards throughout Europe in the summer season.

Yet the profound culture and magic of the island still lie relatively undisturbed by this modernity and the ‘dialects of nature’ thrive, for recent archaeological discoveries and interpretations have brought Sardinia back into the mainstream of ancient Mediterranean culture. This is not intended to be a guidebook, but offers both a suggested cultural itinerary and an introduction to some fascinating aspects of the island. It does not mention every place of interest, which may be found in guidebooks and travel websites, or where to sleep and eat – for which online booking sites offer everything that is necessary and are regularly updated. The aim is to go a little deeper into lesser-known aspects of the island, and places and people that are almost never mentioned – especially some of the interesting characters in its history. Above all, the book is an attempt to explore and investigate the mythical and magical aspects of Sardinia.

Notes

1 In Vita attraverso le lettere (1908–1937), ed. Giuseppe Fiori (Torino: Einaudi, 1994), p. 383.

2 ‘la solitudine del bosco e il silenzio profondo dell’ambiente, interrotto solo dal vento, dai tuoni o dallo scoppio del temporale in lontananza d’inverno, orchestrato dal canto degli uccelli e dal crogiolarsi della natura in primavera, ora per me non era più silenzio. A furia di ascoltarlo avevo imparato a capirlo e mi era divenuto un linguaggio segreto per cui tutto mi sembrava animato, parlante e in movimento…. Quasi conoscessi tutti i dialetti della natura e li parlassi correttamente al punto da impostare con essa, nel mio silenzio raccolto, le uniche conversazioni che mi erano possibili.’ Padre padrone (Nuoro: Il Maestrale, 2003), p. 67. My translation.

3 ‘non ferre hominem pestilentiorem patria sua’. Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares, VII, xxiv; Cicero: The Letters to his Friends, trans. W. Glynn Williams (London: Heinemann, 1952), vol. II, p. 73.

4 ‘Nullo fata loco possia excludere: cum mors Venerit, in medio Tibure Sardinia est.’ Martial, Epigrams, Book IV, LX, trans. Walter C.A. Ker (London: Heinemann, 1919), vol. I, pp. 271–3.

ONE

Into Sardinia: Bosa and Oristano

The sea protects and isolates, but also connects. Any sailing ship setting off from the Strait of Gibraltar, be it a Neolithic open vessel, a Phoenician trader or a Spanish warship, was driven to Sardinia by predominant winds and sea currents, as the prevalence of ancient ports in the south-west illustrates – from Tharros, round the wild, mountainous and mineral-rich area known as the Iglesiante and the fertile Sulcis to Bithia, Nora and Caralis (ancient Chia, Pula and Cagliari). The main sea current along the North African coast is charged near Libya by large wind-induced mesoscale eddies which move upwards from Tunisia towards Sardinia. These are most powerful in the summer, when ancient voyages usually took place, because higher evaporation throughout the Mediterranean causes more water to be drawn in from the Atlantic. It is very clear from maps and video simulations that circular currents would push ships north from that coastline to two areas: first Bithia, Nora, Caralis and Sulci (today Sant’Antioco) on the south-west coast, or further up the west coast to Tharros and Neapolis (at the south-east limit of the lagoon south of the Gulf of Oristano). These were in fact the main Phoenician and Carthaginian ports, with the exception of Olbia in the extreme north-east – which is sited on currents crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea from Italy and thence south along the eastern Sardinian coast (the vagaries of Mediterranean currents may be seen in the fact that in winter they flow east to west from Naples to Sardinia, while in the summer they flow west to east). Currents, winds and weather were fundamental to trade. In winter, the usually placid seas can be surprisingly rough and the winds strong, creating problems even for large modern ferries. Admiral Lord Nelson observed: ‘During the winter, generally speaking, I cannot even get a Frigate from Malta, the Westerly winds are so prevalent; and as they approach the Gulf of Lyons, they are blown to the South end of Sardinia.’¹ The celebrated sixteenth-century admiral of the Republic of Genova, Andrea Doria, on being asked which were the best harbours in the Mediterranean, is said to have replied: June, July and the Gulf of Carthage.

French naval commanders seem not to have heeded such jocular wisdom when they attempted to invade Sardinia in December 1793 with a force of thirty-six ships under Admiral Laurent Truguet. A harsh winter storm drove the fleet away from the Gulf of Cagliari and around the south-western coast, with the loss of several ships. The same happened during a second attack on Cagliari the following February, when the three-masted, seventy-four-gun ship of the line Léopard (just a bit smaller than Nelson’s Victory) was driven ashore and wrecked by another storm. Truguet desisted and returned to France.

Nelson once wrote in a letter to the minister of war in London:

God knows if we could possess one Island, Sardinia, we should want neither Malta nor any other; this, which is the finest Island in the Mediterranean, possesses Harbours fit for Arsenals, and of a capacity to hold our Navy within twenty-four hours’ sail of Toulon. Bays to ride our Fleets in, and to watch both Italy and Toulon, no Fleet could pass to the Eastward between Sicily and the Coast of Barbary, nor through the Faro of Messina.²

This strategic value diminished with the advent of steamships, although commercial traffic was still limited and slow until recent times, even with steam power. The 1865 Baedeker Guide mentions a twice-weekly service from Livorno to Cagliari which took 31 hours, a weekly service to Porto Torres which took 30 hours and a monthly steamer from Naples to Cagliari at 55 hours. The German traveller and scholar Baron Heinrich von Maltzan, went by steamship from Palermo to Cagliari in 1868, noting that very few passengers took the twice-monthly service and that he was the only passenger in first class (there were only two in second class); he also affirmed that the operating company, Rubattino, would have given up the route without subsidies for carrying the post.

But the sea had another surprise in store, when the unlikely figure of a Persian prince born in landlocked Switzerland, the Aga Khan – whose previous sporting interests had been skiing and horse-racing – observed the beauty and magnificent waters of the north-east coast and from 1961 invested in what became known as the Costa Smeralda. This led to a ­growing interest in the island as a holiday destination, also among Italians, and consequently the building of hotels elsewhere along the east coast. This was important, because up to then many towns still had no hotels at all, and travellers either had to pay for lodgings in a private home or arrive with letters of introduction to an important local personage such as a bishop or marquis. This stands in contrast to the situation in Sicily: to take one year as an example, in 1925 there were two ‘luxury’ hotels in Sardinia compared to 240 in Sicily; and twenty-five hotels of ‘primo ordine’, roughly first class, in Sardinia against 1,769 in Sicily.³ But that was already a huge improvement over the situation in the early 1840s, when a German travel writer noted a building just outside Sassari which had two hotels on a single floor: the Albergo al Leone d’Oro opening to the left of a staircase, and the Albergo Sassarese, which he described as the best, with a total of two rooms, to the right. Small, yes, but he says that both were very clean.⁴ The situation improved under the new political and economic impulses of the Risorgimento, so that in 1858 the English traveller Thomas Forester found the best hotel in Sardinia to be in the same city at the aptly named Albergo del Progresso, opposite the monastery of San Pietro.⁵ Eleven years later, the 1869 Baedeker lists five hotels in Sassari, mostly in the city centre, in the area where in the following year work would begin on creating Piazza d’Italia – which was at that time a broad road rather than a genuine square – but makes no comment about their quality or cleanliness, as it does of the hotels in Cagliari, Nuoro and Macomer. Throughout this period, hotels seem to have appeared, briefly flourished, then disappeared.

There are many magnificent beaches in the world, but those in Sardinia have several major advantages, the first and most obvious being that for Europeans they do not require long-haul flights or recovery from jet-lag. More important, as my Sardinian friends often remind me, is the fact that the beaches are very safe: it is true that the sea is sometimes rough when the mistral blows in from the north-west (Italian: maestrale; Sardu: maistràle or bentu maestru), but not usually in the long summer season – in Cagliari the last beach day is said to be St Martin’s Day, 11 November. But most of all, Sardinia is an aseismic, non-volcanic and unpolluted island with no hurricanes, tornadoes or floods, no poisonous insects or snakes (not even vipers, which are common on the mainland), and no dangerous creatures such as crocodiles or sharks. All these features – or their absence – enabled the Aga Khan to launch an elite tourist industry which now accounts for a significant part of Sardinian tourism revenues, although there is resentment that not much of the profit stays on the island. Two years later, the Aga Khan also founded the airline Alisarda, later known as Meridiana and transformed in 2018 into Air Italy, with its base at Olbia (the Middle Eastern connection remains, with 49 per cent of the holding company of Air Italy owned by Qatar Airways).

Today, when the beaches are renowned throughout Europe, there are flights to and from three main airports: Cagliari Elmas for the capital in the south, Olbia-Costa Smeralda for that coast and other main tourist areas, and the smaller Alghero Fertilia in the north-west serving Sassari, Sardinia’s second city and rival to Cagliari, as well as Alghero itself. There are smaller airports on the east coast at Tortolì Arbatax, also near a ferry terminal, and in the west at Palmas in Oristano, but there are no scheduled flights from them. The logic of tourism means that the main airports were built close to ancient harbours which had previously been converted into ferry terminals, at Cagliari and Olbia, and at Porto Torres just north of Alghero.

Since Olbia is mostly used for the beaches of the east coast, the itinerary suggested here is conceived as starting from Alghero but would also work from Olbia or Cagliari. The idea is to begin from the small but attractive town of Bosa on the west coast, an hour’s drive south of Alghero, which provides an easy and relaxing way to slip into Sardinian rhythms. The ideal means of transport is a car, whether owned or rented, or motor-bike. Distances on the island are small: one of the longest possible road journeys, from the ferry terminal at Porto Torres in the north-west to Cagliari in the south, takes under three hours. The itinerary could be followed on public transport, in particular on the excellent local bus networks, for the rail network is slow and not very practical for this kind of trip (in fact, about 60 per cent of the tracks are narrow gauge, mainly used in summer for tourist excursions). But while using buses and trains might make for a fascinating experience, it would obviously take much longer and would exclude many interesting places beyond the routes of public transport.

The coastal road south from Alghero to Bosa makes an ­excellent introduction to the island; it is the kind of road D.H. Lawrence had in mind when he wrote that in England ‘almost any such road, among the mountains at least, would be labelled three times dangerous and would be famous throughout the land as an impossible climb. Here it is nothing. Up and down they go, swinging about with complete sang-froid.’⁶ This is one of the most spectacular drives in Italy, with very little traffic; for most of its 45 kilometres to Bosa there are no buildings at all except for a couple of old shepherd huts, since it leads through an area where construction is strictly prohibited, consisting of the Badde Aggiosu, Marárgiu e Monte Mannu Nature Reserve, and in the southern part the Biomarine Park of Capo Marárgiu. The road surface is kept in excellent condition but is not fast, being Lawrence-tortuous and having numerous viewpoints which impose a halt through their beauty – a bit like the Amalfi coastal road without the traffic and hotels. Rare birds of prey may be seen, including griffin vultures, goshawks and peregrine falcons, and magnificent marine specimens and coral at Capo Marárgiu – which is only accessible by boat, although it is possible to scramble down to some beaches south of the cape.

The valley of Bosa itself emerges as the road makes one last swerve past a rocky outcrop, with the walls of its medieval castle overlooking the River Temo to the left and the small estuary and harbour opening out to the sea on the right. Oddly enough, the coastal road runs parallel to the Temo, which flows due south from the Lago di Temo, rather than from the east as we might expect. Bosa is a small but attractive and prosperous town, with fewer than 8,000 all-year-round inhabitants living in brightly painted houses reminiscent of those in Tobermory on Mull or some Greek islands, a fine main square and some cobbled streets.

Like many towns and villages along the coast, the estuary of the Temo is marked by what is loosely called a ‘Saracen tower’. Attacks by Muslim corsairs and pirates were particularly frequent in the 1520s, when nearby Cabras and Oristano were raided. The great lawyer from Sassari, Domenico Alberto Azuni, a leading expert on maritime law and trade in Paris, made as good a distinction as any between pirates, who act unilaterally with the sole intent of attacking any ship they might come across at sea, and the corsairs, who go to sea with the permission of a state to attack its declared enemies.⁷ It was a short sea crossing from the North African coast, and frequent raids generated fear which led to the building of the look-out towers. Paradoxically, however, these towers also served as landmarks for the raiders who sailed the coasts by announcing the presence of settlements.

Bosa has ancient origins as a Phoenician colony, and 2 kilometres upriver, near its original site and a Romanesque cathedral abandoned in the undergrowth, on the right bank there are the foundations of a Roman bridge. But to all intents and purposes, the oldest feature today is the Castello Malaspina, traditionally said to have been built around the twelfth century by a minor branch of the Malaspina family which appears in Dante’s Divine Comedy – at that time rulers of Lunigiana, where Tuscany and Liguria meet. They were counts of Luni from 984, and linked to many other cadet branches of the Malaspina throughout northern Italy. This particular branch was close to the Genovese and were allies of the Doria family in their attempts to rule over northern Sardinia in the twelfth century. They also owned another castle at Bulzi, inland from the Doria fortress of Castelsardo (originally known as Castel Genovese) on the north coast, and near yet another Doria castle. A further Malaspina castle, which dominates Osilo, a hilltop town just east of Sassari, as this one dominates Bosa, later passed to the Doria for a couple of years. But although the mellifluous name remains, their role in the history of Bosa and Sardinia was minimal. The results of archaeological excavations in the 1990s suggest that the Bosa castle was probably built a century after the traditional date. In fact the castle played a more important role in the period of Sardinian history known as the giudicati, which began around the same time. This is a good place to feel medieval history, and to begin to understand the tensions of modern Sardinia.

The giudicati were four independent provinces or realms which evolved in the ninth and tenth centuries and lasted in their final form until 1420. They had a curiously mixed form of government, with giudici or judges in dynasties governing something akin to the principalities of the mainland but without being absolute rulers, with written constitutions and notable rights for their citizens, and a strong legal tradition based on a consensus between ruler and people. The word derives from Latin judex or judicis and Sardu judike, meaning judge; hence giudicato/giudicati and giudice/giudici – with the exception of Eleonora d’Arborea, referred to in documents as giudicessa. There were four giudicati for much of this period: Cagliari, with its capital in Santa Igia (part of modern Cagliari); Gallura, with its capital in Civita in the north-east (now Olbia); Logoduro, with its capital first at Porto Torres and later in Sassari; and Arborea, which survived the longest and in the end ruled over much of the island, with its capital not far south of Bosa at Oristano. Bosa was a key fortress of Arborea, and several giudici took up temporary residence in the castle. One family in particular, the half-Aragonese and half-Genovese Serra Bas, who ruled Arborea for three centuries, was closely associated with the town.

Today the castle consists of little more than restored walls, but it is worth a visit for two reasons: first, for the view over Bosa down to the river mouth and the sea; second, to see the remarkable fourteenth-century frescoes in the tiny church with a grand-sounding name, Nostra Signora de Sos Regnos Altos, situated within the castle walls. These frescoes were painted in the 1340s, and consist of a cycle on three walls, and on two levels on those walls. The damage of natural decay has been augmented by alterations and rebuilding over the centuries, and in fact these frescoes were only rediscovered in 1973. The impact of Benedictine iconography is suggested by many scenes which may be found in rural churches throughout southern and central Italy, blended with later Franciscan aspects such as the receiving of the stigmata by St Francis himself – who was much admired by the then ruling family of Arborea.

We enter from the west door, passing under a massive representation of St Christopher who as the patron saint of travellers was always painted larger than life size in medieval frescoes to emphasize the power of his protection, and as a welcoming sign of safe arrival; some of the other fragments on this wall are barely legible. Other recognizable personages on either side of the door are St Martin of Tours dismounted from his horse and cutting his cloak to give half to a freezing beggar, and St George slaying the dragon. Both these scenes were medieval favourites in churches and wayside chapels along pilgrimage routes. They imply generosity and again safety.

On the right wall as we move forward there is on the upper level a group of key figures in the early Church, St Jerome, St Ambrose, St Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great, followed by a Last Supper with recognizably Sardinian bread and tableware (a form of medieval ‘localization’), and finally the Adoration of the Magi – with, as was common at that time, a strikingly large ‘baby’. In the lower panels may be seen St Lucy and St Mary Magdalene represented with a series of other female saints facing forwards towards the Adoration and the altar. The presence of the Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother Helena (whose names are legible), both portrayed as haloed saints, are a reminder that Sardinia was a province of Byzantium from 534 for nearly five hundred years, and that its churches followed the rites of the Eastern Orthodox Church. For in Byzantium, Constantine was revered as a saint.

On the left wall is a unique and extraordinary sequence which justifies the climb up to the castle: an allegorical encounter between three living people and three corpses in their coffins (see Figure 1). While all six are traditionally represented as standing, in this case the three corpses are placed horizontally to the right of the standing figures. It seems to me likely that they were painted after the 1347 plague which carried off so many victims and that the work was sponsored by the ruling Arborea family. A group of citizens from Bosa ­travelled to Rome in 1350 to seek pardon during the jubilee of that year – as if their own past sins had been responsible for the plague (the Bishop of Frascati oversaw the jubilee, because Pope Clement VI was then in Avignon). The scenes portrayed belong to a tradition of contrasting human vanity and death, and here St Macarius – a hermit martyr who lived in Egypt in the fourth century – is illustrating the three stages of death to three noblemen, of whom the first two are dressed as local princes. The