We'd driven north through Putifigari in search of Laccaneddu tomba di gigante (in vain, with poor babelfished directions and no signposting) and had planned to head for a beach and relax, but chief navigator Beardy spotted this on one of my bits of mapping and announced it was right on the road, on the way back.
Heading west towards Olmedo on the 127bis, there's a sign for this site about 400m before it, at a right turn. Don't turn right, but watch out for the layby contained within the slip roads of the junction as it's probably the best place to park.
Tomb 1 really is right up against the road.
A 16m corridor first - with a metal gate padlocked across the entrance, but someone had already bent back one of the bars and we were able to squeeze into the anti chamber with an impressive entrance to the main part of the tomb. Apparently discovered by chance 1959, still sealed by the stone slabs of the Bonnanaro culture circa 1600BCE.
I donned my headtorch and climbed in ....
The first room has two massive pillars supporting it, and a false door carved into the wall immediately facing the entrance. It's huge .... and dark! The torch wasn't thowing out much light at all, so I had to rely on the trusty method of flash photography and was immediately spooked by the shape on the right hand wall. The walls are painted in blood coloured ochre with carved doors, but I looked for the bulls horns mentioned in one set of research notes in vain.
A series of rooms lead off this main chamber, with their doors set maybe 3ft high in the walls. With limited light, I didn't climb in but have included a link to a diagram of the whole layout.
So, some not so dainty wiggling back through the main entrance and the bent gate, to explore the slopes of the hill ....
There are another 8 tombs up here!
The entrance area to one was flooded with thousands of tadpoles in the murky green water, and another was mainly collapsed. Further up though, crawling into a tomb revealed another huge double pillared room with chambers off it. Even though I'd been warned there was one in there, I couldn't help but shriek as the resident bat swooped past me .....
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Posted by sals
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