Montresta

Montresta sits in the Planargia, on the border with the Logudoro of Porto Torres, five kilometers inland from Bosa and the Temo river. The town has a single founding story. In 1746, around fifty Greek families of Maniot descent, refugees who had been living in Cargèse on Corsica, accepted land grants from Carlo Emanuele III on the Villa of San Cristoforo di Montresta and established their settlement here.

The Greek influence lasted into the craft tradition that the village still practices: handmade baskets woven from rush and asphodel, sold alongside the everyday textiles of inland Sardinia. The population has declined to under 500, half of what it was a generation ago, but the village retains the layout, the small parish church, and the basket-weaving workshops that the Maniot families brought with them. The Planargia landscape outside, oak woodland and scrub between the volcanic Montiferru and the sea, is most of what brings travelers up the hill.