Su Nuraxi di Barumini

Su Nuraxi di Barumini is the most complete and most studied nuraghe in Sardinia, and since 1997 the island's only UNESCO World Heritage Site. The complex began as a single three-storey central tower of dressed basalt blocks around 1500 BC, during the Middle Bronze Age, and grew over the following centuries into a fortified bastion of four corner towers linked by curtain walls, ringed in turn by a dense village of circular stone huts that reached its peak in the Iron Age before being partly abandoned by the 7th century BC. The central keep, built in successive corbelled chambers, originally rose to nearly 19 metres, making it an engineering feat with no parallel in prehistoric western Europe. What visitors see today is the result of the landmark excavations led by Sardinian archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu from 1949 to 1956, who cleared the site from the hill of earth that had buried and preserved it; his work effectively defined modern understanding of the Nuragic civilisation. The preserved remains include the inner courtyard with its well, the staircases winding through the tower walls, and identifiable village structures such as the so-called 'hut of the assembly' with its stone benches. The site is presented chronologically through compulsory guided visits, and the experience is completed by Casa Zapata in Barumini village — an Aragonese manor built directly over another nuraghe, now displaying finds — and the Centro Giovanni Lilliu interpretation centre. The masonry is robust and the conservation state is excellent, though the upper courses of the keep are lost. Set in the flat Marmilla plain beneath the basalt plateau of the Giara di Gesturi, Su Nuraxi remains the benchmark against which every other nuraghe on the island is measured.