Tonight we are staying in a bed and breakfast in Orgosolo. We picked Orgosolo because our friends Ovi and Cory recommended it for visiting central Sardinia.
The drive over was much quicker than I expected as all but the last 20 kilometers was on a good freeway. The last 20 kilometers were on narrow mountain roads where I appreciated being in our little Fiat car, instead of our big Fiat camper. The roads in the town were really narrow, but I was able to zip around relatively easily in the Panda, which is the basic economy car of Italy.
Orgosoro is high in the mountains of Sardinia and is historically famous for being an area that is difficult to rule. There are many tales of rebellions, vendettas, feud’s, and just plain old thievery. One of the recent tales of a Robin Hood character was a guy from the 1930’s who stole from the rich and took care of the poor sometime. He was eventually caught and sentenced to prison for murder. After his release he returned to Orgosolo and retired from stealing and began to work as a tour guide. They even made a movie about his life.
The other thing that Orgosolo is famous for is murals. In the 1970’s an art teacher moved here from Northern Italy. He got the idea of having his students paint murals on the buildings in the center of the town to help re-vitalize the city.
He started them off by painting a mural in support of the local shepherds who were trying to prevent the Italian army from opening a military training area in the mountains around town. He taught that all murals must include art and words. So most of the murals have political or social themes integrated into them.
There are hundreds of murals throughout the town, done in different styles from primitive, to cubist, to highly realistic. It was fun to walk up and down the streets taking in all of the different murals.
This region has long been a stronghold of communism, the founder of the Italian Communist party was born here, and the teacher who began the mural project was a communist. So a lot of the murals reflect that history.
Tons favorite murals were a series of paintings of more portly ladies on a side street. In this case there were no words to go with the pictures, just the ladies.
After walking for a while we were ready for a lunch and saw an interesting restaurant. We walked into the courtyard and there was a bell hanging there that said in Italian and English to ring the bell for service. We rang the bell and a young man stuck his head out of a third floor window and asked how many. I told him two and he said come on up. The restaurant was beautiful and the food was really excellent and interesting. So far Sardinia is 100% on good meals.
We settled into the bed and breakfast for the evening. We decided to eat in tonight so we went to the local grocery store and picked up some ham, cheese and cheap wine and ate it from the roof of the B&B with a French couple from Brittany.
