February
ORISTANO
THE SARTIGLIA
The
name of Sartiglia, Sartilla or Sartilia, the run in which the
riders launched to the gallop have to pierce how much more silver stars possible,
that it is raced to Oristano the last Sunday and the last day of Carnival, derive
from the Spanish Sartija, that means ring. Very probably they were the Crusaders
to introduce her in West, between the first one and the third crusade (1118
- 1200), together with the Quintana of Foligno and to the Run of the Saracino
of Arezzo. 
The Sartiglia of Oristano was practiced to the court of the Judged of Arboreal,
but it is not from to exclude that it was also developed before the invasion
aragonese, around half the XIII century. In 1500 a canon of the cathedral, Giovanni
Dessì, founded in favor a legacy of the Gremio of the Farmers,
for the maintenance of the Sartiglia.
The Sartiglia is driven by a head raced: Su Componidori. The demonstration
either the Sunday that the Tuesday, it has beginning at 10 o'clock with the
reading, from a herald to horse, of the proclamation of the Sartiglia. At 12.30
o'clock, between rings of trumpet and rolls of drums it begins the long and
careful ritual of the taking the habit of Su Componidori. Worn in a private
room, a shirt richly worked of manner of the seven hundred one, inserted the
short pants adherent of color honey and the boots with spurs, symbols of his
quality of rider, the head raced passes in the adjoining room decorated for
the rite. Characteristic of the flax shirt is the total absence of buttons and
buttonholes for which either the wrists that the collar are sewn to work of
the women. The operation of the taking the habit is performed by the wife of
the president of the Gremio, sa massaia manna (housekeeper), with
the assistance of other young people, is massaieddas. The collar is closed
with studs or chains in silver while the puff of the sleeves of the shirt has
been tightening from three bows of silk, white, red and blue. Then it is the
time of the mask that is assured, over that from the usual drawstrings, from
a colored handkerchief of silk that bandages the superior edge of the same mask
and the front of the Componidori for then to become knotted on the nape.
According to the testimonies of the historians, once, the mask, of wood, it
was of green color on Sundays, in the run organized by the Gremio of
the Farmers and almost black that of the Gremio of the Carpenters. Now
it is of white color with female semblances and a serious and static expression.
The head raced covering directly in saddle from the table and on the table will
have to get off to end run. Sa massaia manna (the Housekeeper) she invokes
on him the help of the protecting saint and the massaieddas (the Housekeepers)
they complete the wish throwing wheat and flowers. Then, assuming a supine position
on the rump of the horse, Su Componidori it is directed toward the exit
between to roll of drums and repeated rings of trumpet.
LACONI
AND ITS MENHIR
Center
of important historical tradition, situated in a back of a calcareous mountain
along the Road National 128 Sardinian Plant, in the western zone of the Sarcidano,
Laconi is attainable diverting on the National Road 131, to the Km. 41, for
Villamar, Barumini, Nurallao. After having made part of the judged of Arboreal
as chief town of the curia of Porte Valenza, became center of dominion, before
the viscounts, then marquisate. It was feudal of it, between the others, Agostino
of Castelvì, involved in the anti-Spanish polemics of the Sardinian Parliament
and murdered in 1668. It passed to the Aymerich that let build a neoclassic
villa planned by the architect of Cagliari Gaetano Cima. Along the principal
street, in the underlying places the town building, the seven rooms of the Civic
Archaeological Museum of the Statues Menhir. The museum entertains menhir that
belong to different typologies, that can be brought back to the following classes
substantially: foreman-anthropomorphous, entirely deprived of signs badges;
foreman-anthropomorphous asexual, that introduces characteristic elements of
the face, what nose and eyes; statues masculine and female menhir, evolution
of him anthropomorphous asexual, richer than details and symbols that allow
also of to distinguish some sexes. The statues originate mainly from the plateau
of Genna Arrele, from Pranu Maore and from the adjacent site of
Genna Palau, from the place Tamadili, from Perda Iddocca,
Barrili, from the region of Bau Carradore and from the valley
Piscina e' Sali. In the inhabited area, not too far from the parish one
of the XV century. Awry of the country, a magnificent Park that belonged, up
to 1990, to the family Aymerich that had received it, as dowry, in the XVII
century. The area of the park is dominated by the presence of the ilex,
Quercus ilex, of natural origin, between which they are insinuated a
certain number of other arboreal kinds as the Pinus halepensis, introduced
in 1800 on the occasion of the construction of the railroad. In the mean of
the garden, the stately ruins of the ancient castle. Alberto La Marmora, in
his Itinerary of the island of Sardinia, it brings that in the wall of the door
a registration is found served as some mason or chisels that it fixes the reconstruction
of the same door to July 14 th 1053. Of it they remain a tower, a 1400 room
in forms Gothic Catalans and a portico of the seven hundred one.
SARDINIAN
TOWNS
PORTO TORRES
Placed
to north west of Sardinia, in the most inside part of the gulf of the Asinara,
Porto Torres is attainable crossing at the end actually the Road National 131
Charles Felice. Placed in the port zone. A little anymore in there, in the quarters
of plaza Christopher Columbus, finds a deriving Roman column from an ancient
temple to signal the extremity of the road Karalis - Turris. Taking, on the
right, the road for Stintino the square of the railway station is reached with,
on the right, the rests of Roman houses, of a paved road and of the apse of
the calidario (local for the baths of warm water) of a thermal building
that goes up again to the age imperial advance. Overcome the passage to level,
it is accessed the archaeological zone that understands the museum, inaugurated
in 1984, the thermal baths said Building of Barbaric King, the Roman district,
the peristilio (inside courtyard surrounded by a portico to columns)
and the small thermal baths. The entry to the thermal building is opened on
the northern side through a portico of which the bases of the pillars stay;
placed side by side by two vain used as dressing-rooms, a vast lengthened
frigidarium, with apse, covered at times originally and with two side tubs
with inlays in marble. On the side west of the thermal baths the rests of a
district with roads to straight angle and portico. Continuing on the same road,
the leftovers of another more small thermal building with a vast heated quadrangular
room, with two apses and a square tub decorated almost certainly by a mosaic
pole-chrome and laugh-lens at the end of the III or to the beginnings of the
IV sec. A little afterwards it reaches AD each other the beautiful Roman bridge
on the I get back Mannu; the construction is long 135 ms and is articulated
in seven arcades of increasing dimensions toward west, that lean on pylons in
limestone and bandaged to the base from blocks of trachite. Immediately after
the bridge, in place Marinella, the vast western necropolis is stretched with
referable graves to the secs. d. substantial C. in you was dug in the limestone
and graves ipogeiche (underground construction) to room. Before 1111,
the construction was prolonged suppressing the façade and erecting a
second apse in forms influenced by the Romanesque lombard. From the side aisle,
two small staircases go down to the anti-crypt that contains varied sarcophaguses,
referable to the III - IV sec. In the inferior crypt, three arcosoli (niches
to form of arc dug in the rock), with the bare of the martyrs turritani
Gavino, Proto and Gianuario. From the basilica it is gone down toward street
Sassari and it is taken the course Victor Emmanuel where, to the number 18,
under the agency of the BNL, rests of the ancient inhabited and big blocks of
limestone of a fortification are preserved. Behind the nautical institute, a
funeral complex composed from more than 50 tombs to arcosoli (niches
to form of arc dug in the rock) or in graves to pit dug in the floor, while
more before, on the waterfront, a complex of 11 burials in pits.
