Orroli

Orroli sits at 550 meters on the Pranemuru, a basalt plateau in the central-southern interior of Sardinia, fifty kilometers north of Cagliari. The village exists because of the plateau. The dark basalt yielded the stone for the Nuraghe Arrubiu, the largest megalithic complex on the island and one of the most ambitious Bronze Age structures in western Europe: a central keep that originally reached thirty meters in height, surrounded by a bastion of five towers, in turn enclosed by a defensive wall with seven more towers connected by curtain walls.

Twenty-one towers in total, on a footprint of five thousand square meters. The complex was built between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries BC, occupied for five hundred years, and produced Mycenaean ceramics that confirm contacts with the eastern Mediterranean. The name Arrubiu, red, is from the lichens that color the basalt walls in summer. The village itself, with its parish church and small piazze, sits a few kilometers from the site.