Aggius

Aggius sits at 514 meters at the foot of the Monti di Aggius, the jagged granite ridge that defines this stretch of inland Gallura, fifty kilometers west of Sassari and thirty-five from Olbia. The granite is everywhere: in the walls of the houses, in the doorframes and stairs, and in the surrounding hills. Just behind the village, the Valle della Luna is a flat expanse where rounded granite boulders sit like dropped stones across the plain.

Aggius was the center of Gallurese banditry for roughly three centuries, from the mid-sixteenth-century Spanish period to the mid-nineteenth century under the Savoys. The feud between the Vasa and Mamia families killed dozens between 1849 and 1857. The Museo del Banditismo, housed in the old Pretura, tells that history alongside the story of Sebastiano Tansu, the Mute of Gallura, who inspired Enrico Costa's novel. The MEOC, the Oliva Carta Cannas ethnographic museum, is the largest of its kind on the island, with working looms still weaving the Aggius carpets.