The Valley Of The Moon Of Aggius 0 Comments

The Valley Of The Moon Of Aggius

By "Valley of the Moon" we can refer to both the Aggius plateau in the inland, and a rocky inlet overlooking the sea in the homonym peninsula, as for the Valley Of The Moon Of Capo Testa.

The Valley of the Moon of Aggius is located near the village of Aggius, 75 km away, less than 20 minutes by car from the Gabbiano Azzurro Hotel & Suites. A barren and fascinating vastness of rocks, also called "The Great Stones Valley", where enormous blocks of granite, shaped over the millennia by wind and rain, make the valley seem as a lunar landscape. The almost unreal silence of the "Valley of the Moon" leads us to introspection being the precise place for meditation. If you may choose, the best time is sunset, which gives it a unique and unforgettable charm.

But Gabbiano's blog always likes to check the area in search of some Nuragic gem. And in fact, inside the valley itself, there is the majestic Nuraghe Izzana, which can be dated between the end of the Ancient Bronze Age and the Final Bronze Age, perhaps the largest Nuragic building in all of Gallura, in a good state of conservation, famous for its tholos (circular construction, truncated cone, made up of rings of stone blocks) and its triangular base.

20 minutes from Aggius, in a cork forest at the foot of Deu Mount, is the Tomb of the Giants of Pascaredda, dating back to 1400 BC.,  peculiar is its singular semi-circular facade made of granite slabs. Lastly, 4 km further on, is the Dolmen of Luras which can be dated back to around 3500 BC., a funerary monument made of 3 huge stone slabs. Near Aggius was also one of the Roman roads that began from Tibula, today the Santa Teresa area, towards the inland.

Grazia Deledda in "The legend of Aggius" tells us how the valley would have been born. "At the end of the seventeenth century there were in Aggius - a small village in Gallura – two teenagers, offspring of two inimical families, who, as often happens in Sardinia, as well as elsewhere, made love."

Almost in parallel with Romeo and Juliet, but a hundred years later, in Aggius there were two young people, children to two ill-disposed families, who loved each other. She, thirteen, and he, fifteen, often met at night in her house. One unfortunate night they were found by the girl's father, who killed the ill-fated boy.

The hate between the two families aroused so much that they took the field armed against each other. Lined up in the valley below the cyclopean stony mounts and ready to fight, at the first shot of the arquebus of the unlucky girl’s father, a frightening thunder was heard throughout Gallura. The mounts had collapsed over the warriors, burying them under scattered rocks. And this is how the "Valley of the Moon" came into existence.

Aggius was actually torn apart by bitter and numerous family feuds even in the nineteenth century, as evidenced by the novels "Notte Sarda" by Pietro Casu and "Il Muto di Gallura" by Enrico Costa.

Gabriele D'Annunzio also wanted to write about Aggius. A few lines of great poetry in a letter addressed to one of the five singers of the Aggius Choir who in 1928 had met in his Vittoriale: If you and the other four truly love me, kidnap me tonight, and take me to Aggius; and build me a hut in an oak wood there on the Tummonsora, so that I may see the gulf and the whole beach as far as La Maddalena, and that I may be woken up every dawn by the Gallura rooster…".

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Written by Daniela Toti

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