Nuraghi of Alghero
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2007
1
3
19
Trip End
Aug 29, 2007
Where I stayed
Porto Torres, Sardinia, Italy
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Nuraghi's are stone towered settlements, thousands of years old, harking back to a very ancient colonisation of the island, a people of a unique DNA type (I1b1b haplogroup) only found in a small number elsewhere in the Pyrenees. The oldest grapes in the world were found in Sardinia too, genetically proven, and still used for Cannonau, the mother of all wines,which I must get round to tasting.
Nuraghi's were originally painted white with black and red stripes, and it was homes of such colours that Plato said were of the bygone Atlanteans. For this, and other correlations, Sardinia becomes one of the candidates for the mythical mystical Atlantis.
The nuraghi we saw, with pine-nuts around that Rosina began cracking open and eating, was of stone blocks and round rooms, the roofing style like the old beehive huts above Coustaussa in France.
The nuraghi had small village huts around it, and they were round as well.
Before leaving Porto Torres we bought our homeward ferry tickets for the end of the holiday. All car space to France was fully booked up. Our campsite neighbour, who was a single mother from Tours, had booked her ferries way back in the winter. All that could be found for us was one space to Geneva in Italy, at a later date than we had hoped, but so be it.
We would be in Sardinia longer and get to see a bit of mainland Italy as well.
