The walls that tell the story of the village
In the heart of the Barbagia, the mountainous interior of Sardinia, Orgosolo is a village of about four thousand inhabitants that has become famous for its murales, the hundreds of paintings that cover the walls of its houses. Once known as a village of banditry and kidnappings, immortalised by the film "Banditi a Orgosolo" by Vittorio De Seta (1961), it has turned its walls into an open-air gallery of political and social art.
The first murales were painted in 1969 by an anarchist group from Milan, Dioniso, but the movement really began in 1975, when the art teacher Francesco Del Casino, from Siena, painted with his students a series of murals to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Liberation. Since then, more than 150 murals have been created, in a style influenced by Picasso, Cubism and Mexican muralism: they tell of the struggles of the shepherds for their land, such as the 1969 protest of Pratobello against a military firing range, the injustices against the people of the Barbagia, emigration, but also world events, from the Vietnam War to the Twin Towers, from Che Guevara to Palestine, the environment and the condition of women. Walking along the main street, the Corso Repubblica, is like reading a history book in pictures.
Tip: in some homes of Orgosolo, local families offer the "pranzo con i pastori", a traditional lunch with roast meat, cheeses and cannonau wine.
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