Tiscali

Interesting facts

The great hollow was once a karst cave whose roof collapsed, and the fallen rubble has since been colonised by holm oak, juniper, ash, wild olive and fig.

Monte Tiscali divides the Supramonte of Oliena from that of Dorgali, with the Flumineddu river and the deep Gorropu gorge in the valley to the east.

The first systematic excavation of the village took place only in 1999, nearly ninety years after Ettore Pais first described it.

The ruins cover roughly 5,000 square metres, about nine tenths within Dorgali and the rest in Oliena.

Tiscali is a key site for understanding the civitates Barbariae, the unconquered peoples of central and eastern Sardinia in the Roman Republican era.

A protection project for the ruins began in 1995, after decades in which visitors and looters had damaged the walls.

Why it is worth it

Tiscali is a prehistoric village hidden inside a mountain. On the summit of Monte Tiscali, a 518-metre limestone peak in the Supramonte highlands of eastern Sardinia, the rock is hollowed by a vast karst sinkhole, a deep depression open to the sky and partly overhung by its own walls. Inside it, invisible from outside until one passes through a broad gap in the rock wall, stand the ruins of stone houses built against the cliffs, shaded by an ancient grove of holm oaks and mastic trees. A great natural window in the wall of the sinkhole looks down over the Lanaittu valley far below.

The village was built in the Nuragic period, between about the fifteenth and the eighth centuries BC, and was used again and partly rebuilt in the second and first centuries BC, under Roman rule; it may have been occupied, on and off, for much longer. The remains fall into two groups: about forty round huts on the northern side, built over a drop, and around thirty square or rectangular dwellings on the southwest. Why people chose to live in such a remote and enclosed place is not known for certain. One widely held view is that it served as a last refuge for the mountain communities of the interior, at the time of the Roman conquest.

The ruins were described in 1845 in a gazetteer of Sardinia, visited in 1910 by the historian Ettore Pais while still well preserved, and photographed and studied in 1927 by the archaeologist Antonio Taramelli. Decades of neglect and looting followed, and only limited excavation has taken place since. The name of the site later passed to the Italian telecommunications company Tiscali, founded in Sardinia. The surrounding Supramonte is a landscape of bare limestone plateaus, gorges and caves, and the Lanaittu valley below holds several other Nuragic and cave sites.

Getting there

The village lies on the boundary between the municipalities of Dorgali and Oliena, about 17 km from Nuoro, the nearest city, and is reached only on foot, by a marked mountain path of about two hours through the Surtana valley and the Doloverre gorge. The nearest airport is Olbia Costa Smeralda Airport (OLB), about 73 km away.

Tiscali

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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