We can therefore find caves in the shape of a round hut with a cone-shaped roof, but also with rectangular and pitched roof spaces, equipped with doors and windows. ![]() Architecturally they reflected the houses of those who remained in the earthly world. The domus remember the houses of the living. They are often connected together to form real underground necropolises, with an access corridor (dromos) in common. More than 2,400 have been discovered, about one square kilometer, and many still remain to be excavated. The caves were positioned next to each other in large numbers, forming necropolis that could accommodate up to a hundred bodies. Traveling around Sardinia you will admire them everywhere. The Domus are actually caves carved into the rock by the ancient Sardinian civilizations more than 5,000 years ago. Obviously this is a Sardinian legend that combines magical elements with millenary stone constructions present throughout the island. Their house is built in the rock and it is called Domus. Someone say that it is a female version of the elves, they live between our world and the divine one. (Casa delle Fate – Fairy House, in Sardinian dialect).īut who are the Janas? They are imaginary creatures of the Sardinian folk tradition, tiny women with a moody disposition, a bit witches and a little fairies, both gentle and naughty. Perhaps a magical hand has designed it, and we will speak of magic places today, the Domus de Janas. Judging by its appearance, there must have been some underground explosion, or it must have been a collision of huge forces to project that single island up high and let it emerge like a congealed clot of rocks and white beaches. It rises up there, an island colored with green and with its granite walls, the waves dvance from the Tyrrhenian and from the Mediterranean sea kissing its coasts. All the domus de Janas, from the simplest to the most sophisticated, exude a magical charm.The island of Sardinia, in the Mediterranean, springs from the sea like a huge treasure chest. Of the thousands discovered, more than 200 retain carved, engraved and painted decorative motifs, largely symbolic, such as cattle heads, bull horns and spirals. Many were built in the likeness of the houses of the living, equipped with double-pitched ceilings, hearths, columns, plinths, basins and false doors, symbols of the passage to the afterlife. There are many types: pit, oven, chamber and with dromos. ![]() The domus are carved into isolated boulders or grouped in necropolises on rocky ridges. ![]() Sacredness and rituals drove the pre-Nuragic men to dig into the rock and decorate the 'rooms' that housed their loved ones, who 'slept' in the womb of mother Earth while waiting for the regenerative journey to the afterlife. The name of these 'artificial' caves derives from the ancient belief, spread by popular legends, that they were the homes of tiny fairies, the Janas, who wove golden threads in the moonlight and watched over children's sleep. ![]() Using only stone pickaxes, these people dug and shaped the hard rock to create underground tombs where they laid the dead and 'returned' them to the Mother Goddess, a divinity attested to by the discovery of hundreds of votive statues. Over 3500 domus de Janas are scattered throughout the island, an expression of the funerary rites of people who lived five thousand years ago, and then reused in later periods. An underground universe, camouflaged in the landscape of the Sardinian countryside.
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