If, for a moment, we move from the classical geographical figure of Sardinia away from
the peninsula of Italy and instead, we take a physical map of Europe, without
political boundary lines, and we observe the Island again, we would realise that the Island lies right in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, near to Europe and Africa, looking, towards the “boot” of Italy, but also towards France and Spain, then perhaps we could better understand the Island, its geography, its history and its people who have always been mixed up in the vicissitudes of Europe. Today, Sardinia is famous for its beaches, its uncontaminated environment and its excellent food, but the situation was the same for Primitive Man who found the necessary material to make arms and found wild life sufficient for their survival and an ideal place in which to take refuge thanks to the presence of many rocky caves.
Since those times, Sardinia has never been abandoned by Man, who created the famous domus de
janas (those little necropolis excavated in the rocks), who created hundreds of menhir - and dolmen along with megalithic altars.
The nauraghe are just the more recent buildings of Sardinia prehistory, the climax of this society and not the
beginning of life on the Island, as some very superficial analysis of the past presented it.
One after the other all of the important and great empires of the Mediterranean have spent some time on the Island, like the Phoenicians, the Punic population, the Romans and after a brief period of the Vandals came the
Byzantine population, up to the time of auto-government known as the glorious Judiciary period. During all of the comings and goings of these peoples the Sardinians did not sit and watch, they took arms
against the invaders and if necessary took refuge behind those natural bastions of the impervious mountains. To prove this point is the name given by the Romans of “Barbaria” , a name often given to populations
who would not be subdued by the Romans and so lived outside the Empire, and here the paradox because the area
“Barbaria” lay right in the heart of the Empire in Sardinia.
Sardinia, with its 24,090 sq. kilometres has only one natural lake, all of its rivers are torrential and its prime
wind is Mistral which whips the Island almost constantly and shows its art in the bizarre shapes of the trees.
These trees act as a compass in their growth as they bend towards the south-east. It is difficult to change the
wind, but so ass to create some “lake” during the last century some works have been carried out so as to block the rivers in the course and so create vast artificial lakes which have favoured the birth of many urban centres and modified the economy. Although the Island has known a brief parenthesis
of mining and industrial activities, the economical cornerstones have always been agriculture and shepherding.
From these descends a prolific hand-craft sector which recently has been discovered by the whole world so giving life to a flourishing exporting activity. But where ever You move on the Island the new economic tendency is
that of environmental tourism which is exploits the territory and its local products generated by that millenary
Sardinia which was once considered a raw left-over of an archaic era, whilst today it is undeniably considered as
being a timeless beauty casket.