Living In A Mountain

IN east Sardinia is the distinctive mountain of Tiscali, whose name was chosen for the Italian telecoms and internet company Tiscali Italia.

The mountain, 518 metres (1700ft) above sea level, is a doline, ie most of the top of the mountain has collapsed, leaving a great depression and a partial roof.

Tiscali, in the central distance, looks like a regular mountain from afar

Its hollowed-out interior was inhabited from 1400-700 BC, and again from the 2nd century BC, possibly for another 1,200 years.

Some Nuragic people are thought to have lived there as a way of escaping Roman colonisers, who took the island from Carthage in 238 BC.

A hole in the wall makes a natural viewing point from which approaching legionaries could have been spotted

All is not as clear as it might be, however, as archaeologists reckon the building techniques used inside the mountain differ from Nuragic settlements elsewhere on the island.

Possibly the site was used in pre-Nuragic times, but whatever the circumstances it must have been a precarious place to live as apparently the only available water was from rain.

Nuragic dwellings are being painstakingly reconstructed, with much still to be done