A visit to the Bronze Age structure at Su Nuraxi di Barumini, shows the best and largest example left by the Nuragic civilisation of Sardinia. There are around 7000 nuraghes on the island – ranging from single towers to multi towered buildings surrounded by smaller stone huts, built between 1900BC and 700BC. Each is a huge investment in time and effort and they are apparently unique to the island, although there are similarities to structures on neighbouring Corsica.
Visiting Su Nuraxi di Barumini
As a UNESCO listed site, Su Nuraxi di Baruminihas plenty of facilities for your visit. The website booking ticket prices and opening times is here. There is a large car park, it is all well signposted and there is a restaurant on site as well as a gift shop. It is one of the main attractions of the island so expect it to be busy. Entrance is by guided tour only due to the narrow entrances and steep and worn steps.
We stayed in the town of Barumini as we were intending to both get some sunrise shots and also visit the nearby museum of Casa Zapata but we didn’t manage either!
My Experience
This is taken from my Sardinian travel blog here:
Our final visit was Su Nuraxi di Barumini, this one the most complex on the island and a major tourist site. There was a proper car park and access was only by guided tour. To be fair, after doing the tour you could see why as access to the central tower was by extremely steep and narrow steps. Kudos to Deb though for even getting out of the car after already seeing two of these sites and then doing the tour too.
Our guide was Sabrina who was celebrating her 30th year in the job! She explained about the rise and collapse of the Nuragic civilisation and how little we actually know about them as they left no written records. Archeologists have shown that the towers originally had merlons projecting out from the top with a balcony above them. The reconstructions look like medieval castles but 3000 years before those really existed and I find it difficult to believe an island the size of Sardinia needed or could support 7000 castles!
The tour was really rather good and we went through the original entrance 20m up the wall and down the steps into the courtyard from which 4 other towers radiated. Outside this structure was a later village, built when the nuraghe was abandoned and largely using looted stone. This site was the busiest of the lot with tours every 30 minutes but the ability to climb almost to the top and get an overview of the structure was fantastic.
Su Nuraxi di Barumini Photo Gallery
History
The information below is copied from the UNESCO page on the site, here:
The archaeological site of Su Nuraxi di Barumini in Sardinia is the best-known example of the unique form of Bronze Age defensive complexes known as nuraghi. The elevated position of Su Nuraxi dominates a vast and fertile plain to the west of the municipal district of Barumini. The site was occupied from the time of construction of nuraghe in the 2nd millennium BCE until 3rd century CE.
Megalithic defensive structures known as nuraghi date from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (c. 1600-1200 BCE), and are unique to Sardinia. Nuraghi are characterised by circular defensive towers in the form of truncated cones built of dressed stone with corbel-vaulted internal chambers. Nuraghi are considered to have initially been built by single families or clans. As Sardinian society evolved in a more complex and hierarchical fashion, there was a tendency for the isolated towers to attract additional structures, for social and defensive reasons.
The Su Nuraxi nuraghe consisted of a massive central tower of three chambers connected by a spiral staircase, originally over 18.5 metres high. The uppermost chamber is no longer standing. The central tower was enclosed within a quadrilobate structure consisting of four subsidiary towers linked by a massive stone curtain wall. The courtyard created by this wall was later sealed with a roof thereby restricting access to the central tower. Surrounding this are the remains of second outer wall and a settlement of circular huts.
Su Nuraxi was abandoned in the 6th century BCE although intermittent occupation took place in subsequent centuries. New houses were constructed in a different form from their predecessors, consisting of several small rooms and constructed using small stones. Following the Roman conquest of Sardinia in the 2nd century BCE most nuraghi went out of use although excavations at Su Nuraxi indicate that people continued to live on the site until the 3rd century CE.
References
The UNESCO listing for the site is here and the history above is copied from it.
The website for Su Nuraxi is here and includes other nearby attractions as well as a detailed history of the site.
The wiki page here has information on the Nuragic civilisation.