Mediterranean Sea, Sant'Antioco Island - August 2021

Sant'Antioco (Santu Antiogu [3] or Sant'Antiogu in Sardinian, San Antiòcco in Tabarchino) is an Italian town of 11 037 inhabitants [1] in the province of Southern Sardinia, in the Sulcis-Iglesiente area. The municipality stands on the remains of Sulki, one of the oldest cities in the western Mediterranean. The island of Sant'Antioco, where the town of the same name is located, is the largest of the Sardinian islands and with its 109 km² it is the fourth largest in Italy after Sicily, Sardinia itself and the Island of Elba . It is about 84 km from Cagliari and is connected to the mother island thanks to an artificial isthmus and a bridge opened in the early eighties. The territory of the island is divided between the municipality of Sant'Antioco, the most populous (which stands on the ruins of the ancient Phoenician-Punic and later Roman city of Sulky-Sulci) and that of Calasetta, the second inhabited center, by number of inhabitants of the island. There are also the small tourist village of Maladroxia, which is part of Sant'Antioco, and that of Cussorgia (Stann'e Cirdu area) in the territory of the municipality of Calasetta. Off the island, towards the south, there are three uninhabited islets, called Il Toro, La Vacca and Il Vitello. The so-called Queen's Falcons, or Falchi Eleonorae, as their discoverer, Alberto Della Marmora, called them, in honor of the Giudicessa Eleonora d'Arborea, usually spend the winter here (and in particular at Il Toro). The history of Sant'Antioco is very ancient. About thirty nuraghi, a certain number of so-called "Tombs of the giants" and "Domus de Janas" testify that the island was not without permanent settlements already in prehistoric times. The presence of numerous coastal nuraghe is remarkable, among which the multi-tower nuraghe S'Ega Marteddu, close to the beach of Maladroxia, the nuraghe Sa Cipudditta located in a promontory overlooking the sea in the locality of Su Portu de su Casu and the site di Grutti 'e Acqua, consisting of a multi-towered multi-lobed nuraghe and one of the largest nuragic villages in Sardinia, within which there are hydraulic and urban works, well temples and tombs of the giants. The village ends between the beach and the cliff of Portu Sciusciau where a nuragic port probably existed. There are also numerous finds of material culture from the Nuragic era found in this area, among which there is no shortage of small bronzes, such as the famous Nuragic archer of Sant'Antioco. In historical times, the first nucleus of the city of Sulki was born, a toponym found in the epigraphic evidence found in Antas. It was founded, probably in the first half of the eighth century BC. (it seems, according to the literary sources, almost in the same period in which Carthage itself was founded) some merchants and navigators coming from an area roughly corresponding to the current Lebanon: the Phoenicians. The data relating to the foundation of the city can be deduced with a good approximation both by referring to literary sources and based on archaeological evidence: the material brought to light in the area of ​​the tophet and in that of the so-called chronicle indicate that the center was fully active at least starting from the middle of the eighth century BC Various scholars, including the archaeologist of the University of Sassari Piero Bartoloni, indicate Sant'Antioco as the oldest city in Sardinia [7] and as the oldest urban center in Italy [8]. At the end of the 6th century BC the Carthaginians, Phoenicians of the West, took possession of Sardinia and therefore also of the island of Sant'Antioco. The North African city will control Sardinia until the time of the Punic wars, when it will be overthrown by the new hegemonic power of the Mediterranean: Rome. M. Brigaglia, ed. Della Torre, Cagliari 2004) Sulci soon recovered from the setback immediately, also thanks to the prosperity of its port and, therefore, its economy, until, around the first century. AD, under Claudius, it was rehabilitated on a political level and raised to the rank of Municipium [10]. In order to be able to realize the level of prosperity reached by the ancient Roman Sulci, it is necessary to consult the demographic trend, an undoubtedly valuable indicator. According to Bellieni, the city between the late Republic and the first imperial phase must have been populated by about 10,000 people, a figure that is actually plausible if we take into account the average population in the Italian centers of the Augustan age calculated by Beloch [11]. The ancient Roman center stood, as can be easily deduced still today by paying attention to the arrangement of the major and minor road axes, in the area including the current via Garibaldi, XX Settembre, Mazzini, Eleonora d'Arborea, Cavour, in the locality called " About Narboni ". Here, and precisely at the intersection between the current via XX Settembre and Eleonora d'Arborea (presumably in the area where the forum stood, not yet located), there is a mausoleum known as Sa Presonedda or Sa Tribuna dating back to the 1st century. BC, roughly coeval with the Roman bridge, located at the isthmus, and with the temple of Isis and Serapis whose ruins are no longer appreciable today. Nothing remains of the ancient structure of the Roman fountain located in the present piazza Italia [12]. Copious mosaics, some of which were used to pave the Basilica of Santa Croce in Cagliari [13] The tradition places in the second century. A.D. the story of the eponymous saint of the island, that perhaps Mauritanian doctor named Antioco who suffered his martyrdom in Sulci under the Antonines, presumably during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD) Su Pisu Savoy fort, built in the years 1813-15 Subsequently Sulci was part of the Giudicato of Cagliari, in the curatoria of the same name, but in the thirteenth century it was by now uninhabited and the seat of the diocese of Sulci was transferred to Tratalias. The Sulcitana island, abandoned, in 1124 was symbolically donated to Sant'Antioco (in fact to the diocese), from which it then took its name, by the judge of Cagliari Mariano II Torchitorio II and his wife Preziosa and then by the Judge Benedetta of Cagliari in 1216 [17]. This desolation, which continued throughout the Aragonese and Spanish period (1324-1713), between the 16th and 17th centuries was exceptionally interrupted two weeks after Easter when, for a few days, thousands of people flocked to the island to celebrate the festival in honor of Sant'Antioco (called Sa Festa Manna). In 1615, in full counter-reformation (substantially the Catholic response to the Germanic Protestant reform, as well as a process of great renewal of the Church and its apparatuses), in a great fervor of hunting for relics, the archbishop of Cagliari Francisco d'Esquivel had the relics of the saint (real or presumed), placed near the catacombs [18]. In 1793, during the French expedition to Sardinia, the town was occupied for a short time by the French, commanded by Admiral Laurent Truguet. Only in the eighteenth century, in the Savoy era, did a process of repopulation of the territory begin, carried out in particular by families from Iglesias, which gave birth to the present-day town of Sant'Antioco which overlapped the ruins of the ancient Sulci. The demographic increase continued in the following two centuries.