It's just by the main road north of Sassari - this surely was a beacon of a place that every traveller in this corner of the island would have known in ancient times.
Just our luck then, that when we arrived, it was closed for maintenance – mostly strimming. But there was no way we were going to go away, so we promised the foreman we'd just walk around it. Of course once he'd driven off to get his lunch, we legged it up onto the top flat stony platform perhaps 10 metres from ground level.
I was so impressed with it. I thought of some of the world's greatest step pyramids – Tikal in Guatemala and Saqqara in Egypt, though it was smaller and less steeply sided than both. Perhaps it started at a simple sacred stone platform, like the marae of the South Pacific, and was added to over the generations. It certainly looked like a monument which has been successively improved and added to over the ages – the massive square cut stele next to the sloping approach ramp, the flatcapped dolmen in the 'moat' area and that crazy bonkers mad pockmarked cosmic egg... (actually more of a giant lemon) all hinted at a place in use over many, many centuries, with additions made in memory perhaps of battles, new gods, revered leaders and so on.
There is so much here to ponder and I absolutely loved it.
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Posted by Jane
1st June 2008ce
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