Gesturi, an ancient village in Marmilla
The village of Gesturi in Sardinia is known especially for its Giara, a rocky plateau with an extraordinary natural environment where you can admire the famous Cavallini (small horses).
An important centre of the Marmilla, the village is populated since the Middle Ages and today has about 1300 inhabitants. An ancient village which is now opening to the tourism. It offers in fact an experience of nature, art and devotion to visitors.
The old centre of Gesturi deserves a special mention thanks to its excellent state. Here you find ancient portals, houses with vaulted arches, perfectly preserved entrances in the narrow streets of the village. Every house still recall the centuries-old agro-pastoral culture of the area.
The settlement consists of the typical farm houses of the Campidano: low buildings, (one or two floors), are built around the courtyard that is closed with arched portals. In the courtyard there “sa lolla”, the portico under which men, animals and tools find shelter. It is like the ideal heart of the house, the intimate place where you make the ritual actions of everyday life.
The Giara and the “Cavallini”
The Giara is a basalt plateau of volcanic origin. Located in central-southern Sardinia, at the border between the lower Marmilla and the Sarcidano, it covers an area of 42 sq km at about 600 m. above sea level.
Surrounded and maybe once protected with an incredible number of nuraghi, it opens above lands where man hardly could change anything. The plateau is covered by rocks, forests of oak and cork trees, and Mediterranean vegetation. In so a small area there is such an amount of different plant species that it is a sort of natural museum. Walking along the 14 km of paths of the Giara, discovering the traces left by man in 3500 years, is an experience that has no equal.
But the Giara is best known for its “Cavallini”! The Giara horses (a species between the horse and the pony) are brown and have an average height of one metre and twenty at the withers. They live in the wild on the plateau and are perfectly integrated since ancient times, as evidenced by some archaeological sites.
House of Fra Nicola
Gesturi is famous for its Giara, but also for the intense religiosity, thanks to the life-long work of Blessed Fra Nicola, who was born in 1882 in a peasant’s house (now restored and open to visitors) of Gesturi. The house of Fra Nicola in the centre of the village is a simple house with the typical features of the rural structure. The furniture and the everyday objects inside the house show the life and work of farmers in the late nineteenth century.
Cover image SardegnaTurismo , for the original one click here
