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If you only visit one nurahge, make it this one! Just take a look at its aerial view from Google ...

Signposted from Sant’ Andrea Priu and south of Torralba, on the SP121, in the valley of the nuraghes – they are everywhere! We’d taken some binoculars and spotted the nuraghes of Fraigas, Oes, Bonzalzas, Mura Coloras and Cabu Abbas with little difficulty – all under 1.5km away. Fig 29 in Margaret Guido’s book shows the distribution of nuraghe across the island – and here it’s over 0.6 per square km. Crazy!

There’s a fair bit of parking in the layby, a simple cafe, ticket booth (entrance fee 3 euros, ticket also valid for the Valle dei Nuraghi museum in Torralba) with information leaflets and an extra hut selling local produce of all kinds.

The site has been managed by La Pintadera Cooperative since 1992, when the town council assigned Santu Antine to them.

We stopped for a toastie and a drink, while talking to an older couple trying to persuade a small scared white kitten to drink the cup of milk they’d bought for it, and then went past the reconstructed round hut at the gate and to the southerly entrance.

There’s a settlement surrounding the nuraghe and it’s possible to make out maybe 10 huts, with some later Roman building too.

The nuraghe itself is built on a triangular plan out of basalt blocks. As you go in, there’s a guard post or sentry box to the left – this area now houses the visitors’ book – and then the courtyard. It might make more sense if you have a look at the plan .... but ....

The furthest left is the entrance to the west tower (B), then a passage which joins the passage which runs from the west to the north tower (D). There’s a flight of stairs up to the second level with a well just in front of it, then an entrance to the central tower. The pattern repeats itself with another staircase, a passage to the passage that runs from D to C, and entrance to the east tower (C).

We checked out the ground level first of all, amazed at the illuminated corridors, and saw the second well in the north tower, which also has a secondary – now barred – entrance to the nuraghe. Then we took the left hand stairs which lead to a walkway round the perimeter wall and then back down the right hand stairs.

The central tower or keep used to be about 25 metres tall, but is only about 17.5 now. Entering this from the east-west courtyard, there’s a corridor that rings the chamber to the right and a staircase to the left. The ground floor chamber has an impressive tholos and is 5.25m wide and almost 8m tall. Following the winding staircase up to the second level, there’s another tholos chamber on top of the first one and this room has several storage niches visible and a low bench seat along its walls. Up again to the third level – this room is now open to the air, hence the reduced height of the tower – with superb views over the surrounding settlement and across the valley and the numerous other nuraghe in the vicinity.

The light had changed in the ground floor corridors by the time we came back down again, from the initial warm orange to a beautiful cool blue grey.

A stunning place!

From Bonorva, follow the signs towards Bono (also signposted for the site) on the SP126 and then the SP43. About 6.5km from Bonorva take the right fork and proceed carefully – we hit the bottom of the hire car on a ridge and pothole combo and though fortunately nothing fell off, and no leakage occurred, it made some very nasty noises for the rest of the holiday and didn’t do much for my nerves! – for another 2.5km. Park on the road by the big tree opposite the site.

Open 10:00 – 13:00 and 15:00 – 19:00 (all day in July and August, I think), entrance 3½ euros per person including guided tour of the main tomb – in Italian!

From the ticket hut, follow the path up the slope and double back on yourself past the steps and tombs to the “tomb of the head” which is locked when the site is closed. This tomb is deep and made up of several different rooms: the vestibule area has cists cut in the floor on the left and cupels the other side of a central rainwater channel. The two rooms behind each have two pillars and numerous side chambers, and on the ceiling you can see the original red paint, and later murals as the tomb was used through Roman times, and then used as a church, and was still in use in the Middle Ages. There are numerous friezes from its Christian period on the walls. There’s also a light well, and the floor in the central chamber has been carved to collect the rainwater that this also lets in, probably used for baptisms.

You are free to wander around the rest of the site – to the right is tomb VIII with its carved roof, meant to resemble the rafters of a hut, and right from there in tomb IX someone’s added graffiti “Ciao Lucy” in red paint.

The steps to the right lead to a small gate, and then a rock cut path to the hilltop, where you find more tombs / dwellings cut into the rock, and the rock cut dolmen, described as being known locally as “the Elephant” in TME, but also listed as a Taurus in my research.

1.4 km east of Mores, on the 128bis, turn south onto the SP47. After 6.3 km turn right, and then after another 3.15km turn right again past the farm to the dolmen. All turns are signposted!

Just before the final junction, we were held up for a while by, but then inched forward through, a flock of sheep and barking dogs, actually herding a few stragglers with the car when we turned to the farm.

The first gate is 730 metres further on – we drove through and parked, walking the last couple of hundred metres.

It’s huge! My notes say 2.7 metres tall, 5 metres long, and the capstone used to be 6 metres by 3 metres by 60 cm, weighing in at 27 tonnes.

The rear wall is missing; the front has a small portal as though belonging to the stele of a tomba di gigante, and inside there’s a niche carved into the side wall.

Whoever had visited the dolmens such as Ladas around the village or Luras had been here, or maybe it’s a local custom, but yet again a potted plant had been left recently.

Free and open access – but watch out for livestock on the approach road!

From the dolmen, follow the wide path away from the farm. There’s a single tree, and then a clump of trees to the right – just before the clump, veer to the right (up a slope heading NNWish), and on the right after 50 metres, the menhir can be found fallen behind some bushes.

On the SS133 from Palau, about 3km west of the town and about 1.5km from the junction of the SS133 and SP123, there’s a turn down the side of the Vecchia Gallura restaurant signposted “zona archeologica”.

TME mentions a sign to “Tomba di Gigante S’Aiacciu” which later turns into a sign for “Li Mizzani” – these are in fact two separate tombas. See palau.it/tombe.html.

To get to Li Mizzani, it’s about 4km from the main road – take the left fork as signposted, and go uphill, then downhill, then uphill again – carefully! It’s narrow and winding, and precipitous in places, and you’ll be needing first gear!

Eventually we found the sign to the right to the tomba, and parked there to walk down the slope and through the gate, to the left away from the church, and through another gate – where we found quite a few parked cars. It’s about 350 metres in total from the signpost to the tomba.

Through a small gate, then to the left a few paces .... well, we obviously weren’t going to get the place to ourselves, as we’d had at many of our other stops, but we weren’t expecting it to be quite so busy!

Maybe a Saturday thing, maybe an equinox thing, maybe just local custom ...

There were a couple of people laid out on one side of the funeral corridor, one laid in the corridor itself with his head through the portal in the stele, and people sat either side of the stele; as more people arrived, they formed a queue sat on the bench seat around the esedra.

Someone asked if I wanted to join the queue – but I just wanted to take photos and wasn’t entirely sure what was going on. Beardy meanwhile sat quietly right at the far side of the esedra. Every so often, the person under the portal would move on, and the next in the queue would take their place – all had come prepared with roll mats or doss bags to lie on.

Beardy was convinced the lady sat waiting was giving him the evil eye and, being unable to check out the tomb properly, we didn’t stay over long. A strange experience – still, interesting to see the site being used for something.

It’s well hidden in the greenery at the top of the outcrop overlooking the village and tomba. So well hidden, you can barely make it out. But peering through the bushes, you can see bits of its walls, and right on the top of the peak, climbing through the undergrowth, we found a way into the short-due-to-landslides corridor of the nuraghe.

The path from the tomba leads you into a wooded area – and then all of a sudden, there’s the village.

A collection of recently excavated huts, with some impressive sizeable chunks of stone being used in their construction, are on the lower part of the slope, and climbing further up, we found a tower – now know to be the southerly one of two.

The tomba reminded me, mainly due to its state of preservation, of Moru, the first one we’d visited. There’s no stele, and no capstones; the tallest stone, at the entrance to the funeral corridor, is probably no more than 60cm high. But it does give a really good idea of the foundations and structure of a tomba.

There’s a post and rail fence around it, but gates are provided.

This site is signposted off the SP90 from Santa Teresa to Capo Testa, with a left turn taking you away from the cape into the Santa Reparata area. Down the winding road, and then at the cross roads you are directed to the left – then a T head with no signpost. We went right initially, and rather than wander aimlessly, I pulled up and used one of my stock phrases I know I need to learn any language.

“Scusi, io non parlo Italiano. Dove è la tomba di gigante, per favore?”

Hand gestures and the phrase “non-asphalto” informed us that we need to turn round as we should have gone left, and up the hill, and then taken the track to the site.

We did this, and 180 metres or so from the main road, we looked at the left fork we should take, and decided to park and walk – of course seeing a few cars stopped further down the bumpy and sandy track. Just over 400 metres later, we spotted the concrete roof of some strange building on the left, and took a track to the right towards the tomba.

Free and open access to the area – no facilities.

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.