Domusnovas (SU)

Domusnòvas is a large village in the province of Southern Sardinia lying at the foot of Punta S. Michele (906 m).

The name evokes the genesis of the village: a "villanova" founded in the Middle Ages by the Pisans, as an agricultural support to the mining economy of the Iglesiente, in the most fertile and rich in water tables of the Cixerri valley.

It was equipped with a defensive wall and a castle, which was located near the current parish church dedicated to the Madonna dell’Assunta, with a modern neo-Romanesque façade and a typical layout of eighteenth-century Latin cross churches with a barrel vault.

The oldest parish church is presumably to be identified in the church of S. Barbara (a transversal one that starts in front of the facade of the Assumption connects the two churches), built at the end of the 13th century near the destroyed walls.

The town is known for the caves of San Giovanni is therefore often known as the town of caves.

Domusnovas has been inhabited since the earliest times. Even today, in fact, we find traces of settlements dating back to the Neolithic, such as the remains of the two cyclopean walls that closed the entrance to the cave of San Giovanni and which were demolished in the nineteenth century.