Discovering the murals, paintings that characterize the facades of the houses
Province: Nuoro Province
Maximum altitude: 620 m a.s.l.
Location: Central Sardinia
Maximum altitude: 620 m a.s.l.
Location: Central Sardinia
History
The story told on the walls of a town-museum. Orgosolo reveals a deep bond with its Barbary roots and with the customs and traditions of the past: it is the home of canto a Tenore, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as a country of murals. The village, of four thousand and 500 inhabitants, is famous all over the world for the evocative paintings that adorn the streets and squares, houses in the historic center and the facades of new buildings. They tell of politics and culture, intimate dissent and popular struggles, malaise and social justice, daily life and pastoral traditions. At the end of the nineteenth century, the town rose to prominence due to banditry: the director Vittorio De Seta, in ‘Bandits in Orgosolo’ (1961), describes its struggle in defense of the lands expropriated by the state. During the twentieth century the cultural ferment, still active, of muralism developed, originally an instrument of protest
THE MURALES
Hundreds of murals color the streets of Orgosolo and tell the customs and traditions, the culture and the intimate dissent of the people of Barbagia. The liveliness of the 60s and 70s favored the development of collective murals, which still describe peasant life and power struggles in great detail today, alternating socio-political themes with the representation of typical icons of everyday life: women at work, men on horseback and shepherds.
