Visit Monte Baranta Complex, Olmedo, Sardinia, Italy

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The pre-Nuragic complex of Monte Baranta is an important archaeological site, dating back to 2500-2200 BC, located in the Nurra region of northwestern Sardinia, in the locality of Su Casteddu, about two kilometers from the town of Olmedo. Situated at an altitude of approximately 120 meters above sea level on the trachytic plateau of the mountain of the same name, it dominates, to the south, valleys and plains that extend as far as the harbour of Alghero. The megalithic complex of Monte Baranta is composed of four different entities: the enclosure-tower, the wall, the village and the sacred area. In 2025, the site was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Despite the careful surveys carried out in the Olmedo area at the beginning of the last century by the scholar Filippo Nissardi, the Monte Baranta complex remained unknown until a few years ago. Absent from the List of Monumental Buildings drawn up in 1922, it appears for the first time on the IGM maps of 1958 as "nuraghe Su Casteddu " and, subsequently, in a 1962 study by the archaeologist Ercole Contu, who, however, provides a partial description of it. Only in the late 1970s, thanks to excavations carried out on the site by Professor Alberto Moravetti, was a complete descriptive picture obtained; analysis of the finds also allowed the settlement to be attributed with certainty to the Copper Age and, more specifically, to the Monte Claro culture.

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