Nuorese Cultural District
Olzai
Description
Olzai is an enchanting town surrounded by mountains and overlooking a picturesque valley, with panoramas range from the Gennargentu mountains to the valley of the Tirso river.
Olzai’s historic centre preserves the authentic feel of Sardinia’s old villages, with its flagstoned streets and traditional granite houses.
The oldest building is the picturesque church of Santa Barbara, which was built in the fourteenth century and seat of the seventeenth-century confraternity of Santa Rughe. Inside the church, there is a fifteenth-century painting by the Master of Olzai titled Retable of the Plague that was probably painted in thanks after the plague of 1477.
The Rio Bisine, channelised in 1921, runs right through the town.
One of the town’s main attractions is the artist Carmelo Floris’s eighteenth-century house museum.
Inside, various works by the painter and printmaker are on display, and you can visit the rooms where the family lived, decorated with period furnishings, on the first floor, as well as the artist’s studio, on the second.
Just outside the town you find the Su mulinu Vetzu water mill, an example of pre-industrial architecture that documents the historical importance of processing grain in Olzai.
The countryside outside Olzai is criss-crossed with trails and old mule tracks that lead to the tops of the surrounding hills.
Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the town was distinguished for its residents’ high level of education, boasting a low illiteracy rate for the time and a large number of college graduates. The importance placed on education led to the construction of the first school for young children, the Asilo di San Vincenzo, founded by Canon Salvatore Fancello in 1904. Run by the Daughters of Charity, the school welcomed children between the ages of three and six and, besides the educational aspect, offered free meals to children living in poverty.