Majori

Just outside Tempio is Nuraghe Majori, my first nuraghe. This one is run as a tourist attraction with shop, café, loos and a stuffed wild boar. Picking our way through the cork oaks (which were festooned with hairy caterpillars hung freakily from long silken threads waiting to ambush me) we finally arrived at the nuraghe.

Made of huge blocks of stone piled up carefully to create thick walls, they look like Menorcan talaiots, the difference is that nuraghes have internal chambers, perhaps used for food storage, would be my guess as they were very cool and dark inside. This one had two corbelled chambers leading off from the main corridor, an in one hung some sweet little bats right up in the apex. The corridor continued through the wall and spiralled up and out into an higher external platform giving great views all around.

On the SS133 about 2km north of Tempio.

There’s a large car park on the main road by the signpost, though it is possible to drive up the track and park at the site itself.

There’s a cafe and toilets (50 cent coin required, with proper disabled facilites), and slides and a roundabout for kids. The walk from the ticket hut (tickets 2½ euros each including an information leaflet and loan of a big torch!) has been thoughtfully laid out as a nature trail with the plants labelled, and wide steps or a gentle slope to reach the nuraghe itself.

It’s set on a granite outcrop, and shows both styles of nuraghe building – the corridor and tholos.

Through the ESE orientated entrance into the corridor, there are tholos rooms on either side. Both are dark, but we’d been loaned a powerful torch, and there was another one left just inside the entrance (which has an impressive lintel); the room to the left has a niche, and we found a colony of bats resting there.

Along the corridor and up some stairs takes you to a semi circular room open to the sky, with further stairs to the left leading up to the terrace level, where there’s the remains of another room, with storage silo, and fantastic views where you can spot if you know where to look many other nuraghe in the locality.