The village
Illorai
Nine hundred people on the slopes of the Goceano, where the Tirso river is still young and the woods smell of cork oak. A small village carrying five thousand years of history.
The land
Illorai sits halfway up the hillside, overlooking the Tirso valley in the heart of the Goceano. All around, fertile countryside, pastures and woods that change colour with the seasons: the dark green of the cork forests, the gold of the stubble fields, the light snow that sometimes whitens the roofs.
The river is the backbone of this land: along its upper course you walk among trails, small waterfalls and silences that few other corners of Sardinia still offer.
Five thousand years of history
Before the nuraghi, there were already houses carved into the rock for the dead: the Molia necropolis, a complex of domus de janas almost five thousand years old. The largest tomb has sixteen chambers on several levels, one of the most imposing hypogea on the island.
Then came the towers: among the nuraghi of the territory stands Iscretti, with its two-storey central tower and side towers, and nearby a sacred spring where water itself was worshipped.
Over the Tirso, downstream from the village, the Romans built a 35-metre bridge that Pisan craftsmen refitted in the Middle Ages: it is Pont'Ezzu, 'the old bridge', still standing, still crossable, a symbol of the village and of its stubbornness.
In 1624 the Augustinian friars arrived and kept a convent in Illorai for almost a century and a half: from them the village inherited its devotion to San Nicola da Tolentino, which became the festival of Illorai's young people.
The traditions
Illorai's year revolves around its festivals. In August, at the rural sanctuary of Luche, the Madonna della Neve: here the novena is called 'su nuinare' and lasts not nine days but fifteen, with families living in the cumbessias around the church and the women dressing the ancient statue in its embroidered costume.
In September San Nicola da Tolentino, with vespers, the procession, games in the square and evenings of tenores and Sardinian dances. In October the great feast of the patron, San Gavino Martire, when the village fills with those who come back from everywhere.
And in between, everything else: sa limba — the Logudorese Sardinian still spoken here every day — bread made the old way, guitar songs, the countryside setting the pace. Traditions that are not a museum: they are Illorai's way of being in the world.