Nuoro Events

The Barbagia calendar is the best in Sardinia, and almost all of it happens outside the tourist season.

Autunno in Barbagia

From September to December, around thirty villages take it in turn, weekend by weekend, to open their courtyards, cellars and workshops to visitors. You walk into people's houses to watch bread being made, wine poured, weaving and carving done, and eat in the courtyard. It was designed to keep the villages alive out of season, and it works: it is the single best way to see the interior.

Carnival and the Mamuthones

From 17 January, the feast of Sant'Antonio Abate, through to Lent, the mask traditions come out across the Barbagia — the Mamuthones and Issohadores at Mamoiada, and different figures at Ottana, Orotelli and elsewhere. Bonfires, cowbells and black wooden faces in a cold street.

Sagra del Redentore

The last Sunday of August. A procession climbs Monte Ortobene to the Redeemer statue, preceded through Nuoro by groups in traditional dress from across the island, with horses and launeddas. The statue itself was put up in 1901, one of a set raised across Italy for the Holy Year, and the climb to it is made on foot by several thousand people.

The fires of Sant'Antonio

On 16 and 17 January every village builds a bonfire in front of its church and burns it, with wine and bread handed round in the cold. It opens the carnival season across the whole interior, and in some villages it is the night the masks first appear.

Village feasts

Every village has its own, and they are not advertised outside the province.