Orgosolo

Orgosolo
Country	Italy
region	Sardinia
province	Nuoro  (NU)
Local name	Orgòsolo
Coordinates	40 ° 12 '  N , 9 ° 21'  E Coordinates: 40 ° 12 '0 "  N , 9 ° 21' 0"  E
height	620  m slm
surface	223.66 km²
Residents	4,117 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density	18 inhabitants / km²
Post Code	08027
prefix	0784
ISTAT number	091062
Popular name	Orgolesi
Patron saint	San Pietro
Website	Orgosolo
View of Orgosolo

Orgosolo (Sardinian Orgòsolo ) is a municipality in the Sardinian province of Nuoro in Italy with 4117 inhabitants (as of December 31, 2019).

Location and dates

Orgosolo is located 21 km south of the provincial capital Nuoro . The place is in the center of the rugged Supramonte Mountains in the heart of the Barbagia . The Monte Lisorgoni ( 978  m slm ) rises above the village . The neighboring municipalities are: Dorgali , Fonni , Mamoiada , Nuoro, Oliena , Talana , Urzulei and Villagrande Strisaili .

history

There are many witnesses of the nuragic culture in the vicinity of the village : fountains , dolmens , rock and giant tombs and nuragic settlements .

• In the resistance against the numerous conquerors of Sardinia , a bandit culture developed, which was also the subject of criminological studies in the 19th century . Thus creating Alfredo Niceforo , a follower of Cesare Lombroso , in his book Crime in Sardinia the myth that the Sardinians were predetermined to crime.
• 500 armed orgolese stormed and plundered the town of Tortolì in 1894 to steal the property of a large landowner, many of whom died in the process. The raids of Sardinian mountain people called Bardanas are documented from Roman times up to the 19th century.
• From 1903 to 1917 there was a bloody family feud ( disamistade ) in Orgosolo , the trigger is said to have been the dispute over the inheritance of the richest Orgolese Diego Moro, who died in 1903, according to tradition. The feud divided the population in two warring halves and in those years more than 50 people fell victim to the blood revenge . After a process of reconciliation seemed to have been reached in 1917, the disamistade broke out again after about 30 years . The threat of blood revenge, but also the occupation by the Carabinieri and the arbitrary arrests of the “mainland” authorities once again drove men to hide in the mountains and thus often become bandits. The support of the village population against the hated Carabinieri was mostly certain to them. Orgosolo was declared a "bandit's nest". "The headquarters of the outlaws, where people suck in hatred with their mother's milk" read Italian newspapers.
• In the bitter poverty of the 1950s, the teacher and writer Maria Giacobbe wrote a letter to all of Italy asking for donations - beds, clothes, food and toys for the children of Orgosolo.
• In 1962, the English tourist couple Eva Beardsley and Edmund Townley, who lived in Kenya and wanted to settle in Sardinia, were murdered - an act that is difficult to classify in the archaic rules of shepherds and the laws of blood vengeance.
• In 1969 the village community achieved a peaceful victory against the "continent": a NATO military training area was to be built on Pratobello - the traditional pasture of the village between Orgosolo and Fonni . When the soldiers and tanks advanced, however, virtually the entire population of Orgosolos opposed them. By blocking the roads and occupying the pastures, she was finally able to withdraw the troops.
• The protest against the extension of the national park " Golfo di Orosei " to the Gennargentu Mountains has been a topic since the 1990s . The national park already exists on paper, but has not yet been implemented.

Culture and sights

Murales

The very first mural known as the murales was drawn in 1968 by the anarchist Milanese group Dioniso in Orgosolo. After seeing the film Banditi a Orgosolo , the drawing teacher Francesco del Casino from Siena , who was close to the Communist Party of Italy , settled in Orgosolo and began painting pictures on the walls of houses with students in Orgosolo in 1975. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the partisan struggle against fascism. The paintings in Sardinia began in the rather unknown village of San Sperate . The wall paintings in Orgosolo initially expressed the protest against the planned NATO military training area on Pratobello. The protest is also directed against the Milan company bosses who have embezzled funds from the construction plan for Sardinia. Newer portraits comment z. B. the world politics - because of Stammheim Helmut Schmidt is referred to as an "expert on state murder", a victory of the Cambodian and Vietnamese fighters against the USA on April 25, 1978 is celebrated and the number of innocent victims for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is questioned. Other pictures depict the simple shepherd and village life, advocate the preservation of the Sardinian language or even contain advertising messages. An ironic murales also makes fun of Alfredo Niceforo's studies of crime in Sardinia (see story) . Many of the approx. 120 murales are stylistically based on Cubism in the manner of Picasso's Guernica , but there are also more realistic paintings among them. In addition to Francesco del Casino, the artist and self-taught artist Pasquale Buesca, who also lives in Orgosolo, the artist group "Le Api" and the Milanese artist Massimo Cantoni were responsible for the murals. Despite some damage, for example due to the renovation of houses or the weather, all murals are largely very well preserved.

music

As everywhere in Sardinia, the Canti a tenores are also widespread in Orgosolo. In the tradition of polyphonic male chants, in which an improvisational tenor (sometimes several) recites verses from a poem in Sardinian , to which three choristers respond with syllables: a bass part , a baritone and an alto part . The men usually stand in a closed circle and cover their ears with one hand in order to hear their own voice better. The motifs of the texts are similar to those of the murales: they tell of the life of the shepherds and in the village, of the collective struggles, of workers killed in the factory, of the Barbagia . These chants are practiced in Orgosolo by the Gruppo Rubano , the Gruppo Pratobello and the Coro d'Orgosolo del Supramonte .

Traditional costume

In Orgosolo the tradition of archaic, polyphonic female chants for rosary prayer has been preserved most strongly. This tradition is continued in their own way by the group "Actores Alidos", which also played in some places in Germany and in Vienna in November and December 2006.

Movie

Vittorio De Seta shot the film Banditi a Orgosolo in 1961 in Orgosolo and with Orgolese shepherds . It shows a shepherd involved in a cattle theft and accused of murdering a carabiniere. He has to start a bandit life in the mountains.

Economy and Infrastructure

The traditional main branch of the economy is sheep farming. Other employers are the construction industry and the rest of the service sector. Tourism has been added to this for some time. It initially benefited from Orgosolo's notorious reputation as a bandit's nest - tour operators organized "robberies" of fur-clad bandit actors on their buses to entertain tourists. The cemetery, on which many graves have inscriptions such as “shot by ...” and “murdered on ...”, also became a tourist attraction.

Today tourism in the place lives mainly from the international fame of the Murales.

Literature, Films and Sources

• Kristine Jaath, Peter Höh: Sardinia. Reise-Know-How Verlag Bielefeld 2002. ISBN 3-8317-1094-5 . P. 544ff
• Carlo Levi : All honey is running out. Publishing house DuMont Cologne 1965. pp. 37, 65
• Birgit Kienzle: Sardinia. Documentary. Minute 9-12.
• Rolf Ackermann: Eight times Sardinia. 1986. ISBN 3-492-15109-4
• Antonio Pigliaru: La vendetta barbaricina come ordinamento giuridico (The barbaric blood revenge as a legal order)
• Vittorio de Seta: Banditi a Orgosolo. Italy 1961, 91 '
• Piredda, Giovanni A./ "Kikinu": Wall painting in Orgosolo. Complete guide to the murals work. 3. Edition. Orgosolo. no year
• Granzer / Schütze: Corazzu, images of resistance on the walls of Orgosolos. Prometh Verlag, Cologne, 1979, ISBN 3-922009-19-0

Web links

Commons : Orgosolo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Website of the municipality (Italian)
• I murales di Orgosolo - Image galleries of the murales in Orgosolo
• The Murales of Orgosolo (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Statistiche demografiche ISTAT. Monthly population statistics of the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica , as of December 31 of 2019.
2. ↑ IL 28 OTTOBRE 1962 Uccisi a pistolettate due inglesi giunti per sistemarsi nell'isola , last accessed on September 12, 2016