Sardinia has something like seven thousand stone towers standing in its fields, built by people who left no writing at all, and almost nobody who comes here for the beaches goes to look at one.
Two of the most accessible are twenty minutes from Alghero, they cost single figures, and on a weekday afternoon in shoulder season you may well have them to yourself. This is, for my money, the best thing you can do inland from this town.
What a nuraghe actually is
A truncated cone of dry stone, built without mortar, with a corbelled chamber inside: each ring of stones set slightly further in than the one below until they meet at the top. No arch, no keystone, no cement. Some are single towers, some are complexes with outer walls and villages around them.
They went up roughly between 1800 and 1100 BC, which puts them alongside Mycenae and well before anything Roman on this island. There are around seven thousand surviving and there were probably far more.
Here is the part that gets me: we do not know what they were for. Fortresses, watchtowers, temples, chieftains’ houses, grain stores, all have been argued. The people who built them, the Nuragic civilisation, left no written language. Everything we think we know is inferred from what they made and where they put it.
So you are standing in front of an enormous, competent, three-and-a-half-thousand-year-old building with no idea what it meant to the people who built it. I find that better than a museum label.
Nuraghe Palmavera
Ten minutes out on the road toward Capo Caccia, so it pairs neatly with a cape day.
The site is a central tower of dark basalt with a second tower added later, an outer wall, and the foundations of about fifty round huts spreading around it. You can go inside the main chamber, which is low, cool and very dark after the glare outside, and look up at the corbelling.
The building everyone stops at is the meeting hut: a large circular room with a stone bench running all the way round the wall and a carved model of a nuraghe in the middle. Something happened in that room. Nobody knows what.
Entry is around seven euros full, five reduced. Open every day except Christmas, with hours that move by season: roughly ten to seven in high summer, ten to six in spring and autumn, and ten to two through the winter.
Anghelu Ruju
Older, stranger, and less visited.
This is a necropolis of domus de janas, which translates as fairy houses or witches’ houses, and they are tombs cut down into flat sandstone. Thirty eight of them here, dug out between roughly 3300 and 1800 BC, which means the oldest predate the nuraghi by well over a thousand years.
You walk across an open field of pale rock and there are square holes in the ground, with steps cut down into chambers below. Some have carved bull’s horns on the walls, which are thought to be religious. Some have several rooms. All of them were dug with stone tools into solid rock, which when you are standing in one is a difficult thing to hold in your head.
Entry is around five euros full, four reduced.
The site is exposed and there is no shade. In July and August, go early or late.
The combined ticket
The two sites together are around eight euros full, six reduced, which is barely more than one of them and is the obvious way to do it. Ask for it at whichever you reach first.
An audio guide is available for a few euros more. The signage on site is thin, so if you want to know what you are looking at, take it or read up first.
How to visit
Both are on the road out toward Porto Conte and the cape, a few minutes apart, and both have parking at the gate.
Without a car it is harder. Some of the summer buses along the Capo Caccia road pass nearby, but the stops are a walk from the entrances and the service thins outside high season. Realistically this is a car trip or a tour. Transport options are set out in getting to Alghero and getting around.
Go late. The last two hours before closing are the best of it: the light rakes across the stonework, the coach groups have gone, and the heat has dropped. Two hours covers both sites comfortably.
Wear proper shoes. The ground at both is uneven rock and dry grass, and at Anghelu Ruju you are stepping down into cut chambers.
The giants’ tombs, and the other thing in the fields
Once you have seen a nuraghe you start noticing the rest of it, because this landscape is full of Bronze Age building and most of it is unmarked.
Tombe dei giganti, giants’ tombs, are long collective burials with a curved forecourt of standing stones and a tall carved slab at the centre with a low opening at its base. They are contemporary with the nuraghi and there are hundreds across the island. The name is medieval and wrong; the people buried in them were ordinary size.
Sacred wells are the strangest of it: underground chambers reached by a flight of precisely cut steps, built over a spring, with corbelled roofs so well made that water still collects in them. Some are aligned so that light falls down the stairway on particular days of the year, which is either coincidence or the single most sophisticated thing anybody built here.
None of these is signposted from the road. If you are driving out to Palmavera and you see a heap of shaped stone in a field, it is probably not a heap.
If you want more
The Museo Sanna in Sassari, forty minutes north, holds the bronzes: small cast figures of archers, wrestlers, shepherds and animals, a few centimetres high, made by the same civilisation. They are the closest thing to a self-portrait these people left, and seeing them after the sites rather than before is the right order. That trip is in day trips from Alghero.
Further afield, Su Nuraxi di Barumini is the great one, UNESCO-listed and far more elaborate, but it is nearly three hours away toward Cagliari and belongs to a different part of a Sardinian itinerary.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a nuraghe?
A dry stone tower built in Sardinia roughly between 1800 and 1100 BC, using corbelled construction with no mortar and no arch. There are around seven thousand surviving on the island. Their purpose is genuinely unknown, because the civilisation that built them left no written language.
How much does Nuraghe Palmavera cost?
Around seven euros full and five reduced. The Anghelu Ruju necropolis is about five and four. A combined ticket for both is roughly eight euros full and six reduced, which is the sensible option since they are a few minutes apart.
What are the opening hours at Palmavera?
They shift with the season: roughly ten to seven from June to September, ten to six in April, May and October, and ten to two from November to March. Open daily except Christmas, but check before travelling in winter.
Can you visit the nuraghi near Alghero without a car?
With difficulty. Some summer buses on the Capo Caccia road pass nearby, but the stops are a walk from the entrances and the service is seasonal. Most visitors drive or take a tour.
Are the nuraghi worth visiting?
Yes, and they are the best-value thing to do around Alghero. Both sites are cheap, uncrowded and twenty minutes from town, and standing inside a three-thousand-year-old corbelled chamber that nobody can fully explain is more affecting than most ticketed attractions.
Read also: Day Trips from Alghero | Alghero’s Catalan Heritage | Victoria’s Complete Guide to Alghero
