Two nuraghi on the Sant'Elia hill in Cagliari, a few meters from the village overlooking the sea.
This is the belief, supported by field tests and analysis of the architectural body, of archaeologists Raimondo Zucca (former professor of Archaeology and History of Greek and Roman Art at the University of Sassari), Giovanni Ugas (who taught Prehistory and Protohistory at the University of Cagliari) and Nicola Sanna . It is a chance discovery (or rediscovery) that occurred during a walk on a sultry summer afternoon.
A discovery capable of rewriting the history of Cagliari and giving further impetus to research on the most ancient settlements in the capital .
Carla Deplano , archaeologist, art historian, and professor at the Martini Institute, while walking along Via del Borgo Sant'Elia to reach the Perdusemini coastal tower, notices a stone structure resembling "the defying towers of the centuries" (as archaeologist Alberto Maria Centurione described it in the second half of the 19th century). The structure, embedded in the concrete wall that delimits a military area, has the characteristics of a nuraghe . Carla Deplano needs certainty. The help of specialists is needed to dispel any remaining doubts. Ugas and Sanna carry out an on-site inspection.
The oldest story - "We found ourselves faced," they explain today, "with a single-tower nuraghe , refaced, constructed with rows of limestone blocks, about seven meters high, built around the 14th-13th century BC, remodeled and reused in the last century as an observatory by the military, who built a ramp, exploiting the rows of stones as in the military post above the Diana nuraghe in Quartu." Raimondo Zucca is also involved, who convincingly supports the thesis. The investigations are continuing and are not limited to the area already inspected. On the road leading to the Savoy fort of Sant'Ignazio, scholars find another building with the characteristics of a nuraghe, less conspicuous, just over three hundred meters from the previous one .
For archaeologists it is a stone monument, an expression of the ancient Sardinian civilization, "built in the Middle Bronze Age, remodeled and renovated in the last century, on which the enclosure wall of a Navy area rests."
According to those who conducted the investigation, "this structure, no more than 4.5 meters high, is a protonuraghe, built with large limestone blocks arranged in a honeycomb pattern. The two nuraghes tell the story of two different periods of the Bronze Age in the Cagliari area."
Raimondo Zucca, Giovanni Ugas, Nicola Sanna, and Carla Deplano illustrated, on the Sant'Elia hill, the characteristics of this extraordinary discovery, a place where numerous artifacts recalling the city's most ancient history have been found.
A new page - "In addition to the complex nuraghe of Monte Urpinu, heavily remodeled in ancient times and in modern times, at least two nuraghes stood guard over the sea in the Cagliari area. It is conceivable that in its highly complex hill system—as Zucca and Ugas clarified—other structures may have been erected, particularly on the Castello hill, as Antonio Taramelli hypothesized at the beginning of the last century. Taramelli himself, Superintendent of Sardinian Antiquities, writes of nuraghes present at Monte Urpinu and Sant'Elia. Then there is the darkness, at least apparent, regarding the grandiose age of the nuraghes in the Cagliari area. The very recent discoveries open a new page and provide stimulus and ideas for research."
The archaeologists informed the Superintendency, "which is responsible, together with the Municipality, for taking the necessary steps to protect, better understand, and enhance these unpublished testimonies to Cagliari's ancient history. The Sant'Elia promontory, rich in memories of a distant past, is one of the finest symbols of this history." In the video, archaeologists Raimondo Zucca, Giovanni Ugas, Carla Deplano, and Nicola Sanna.
