The route

The park museum

S’Abba Frisca Park Museum is in the Littu Valley in the Dorgali council territory. It is surrounded by a thick forest of holm oaks and extends below the limestone bastions of Mount Ruiu and Mount Irveri, the northernmost offshoots of the marine highland, about two kilometres from the sea at the Gulf of Orosei. Easily recognised by its majestic entrance gateway made of basalt stone, it is both park and museum. By following an impressive botanical route you can find 15 museum areas built within a long-standing farm.

The spring

The dominating element inside the park is water. Fed by the spring called S’Abba Frisca (“fresh water”), many fountains, cascades and sprays are highlights along the way as the route winds through megalithic pathways, hedges and centuries-old trees. The Mediterranean maquis is the main feature here, with particular attention paid to the plants that were used by people until relatively recent times, such as those for medicinal purposes, and for dyeing textiles with extracts from bark and berries that have particular colouring properties. In the first section there are mallards and other ducks, moorhens, and turtles on land and in water.

The ethnographic route

develops along internal and external spaces with displays of around 4,500 items from farming and grazing activities, to represent life in Sardinia from the 14th century up to the 1930s. Among the museum buildings there is “su Cuile”, a shepherd’s hut constructed about a century ago of basalt stones and juniper wood, and its circular form recalls the shape of Nuragic era buildings. The hut has shepherd’s equipment for cheesemaking, and an atmosphere wrapped in the intoxicating perfume of the juniper trunks. A little distance away is the goat enclosure, a farmer’s courtyard with a donkey-powered mill, an ox cart, ploughs and a blacksmith’s courtyard with a forge and bellows from the 19th century. In the stock room there is a large container called “s’Orriu”, made of cork and used to store cereals, and there are saddles and harnesses for horses as well as numerous items for working in fields and for processing farm produce. There are bedrooms and storage chests from the 18th century, a room for spinning and weaving on old looms, clothing from times gone by for everyday and festive use, as well as weapons, jewellery and musical instruments.

The weapons

There are particularly interesting sabres (leppas de chittu) from the 19th century which men carried habitually at their side for personal defence. Some of the blades are engraved with a sun symbol, the mark of workshops in Toledo, Spain. Others have stars and half-moons. Among the firearms there is an outstanding and very rare Sardinian flint-action rifle made in the second half of the 18th century, intricately decorated and signed by the famous armourer Barbuti at Tempio Pausania.

The olive oil and wine making

Wine presses from the 17th century dominate the area devoted to making Cannonau wine. Dorgali has a long tradition of vine cultivation dating from Roman times. The stone olive press powered by horse and the 19th century cast iron press bear witness to the importance of olive oil production for the old farm at S’Abba Frisca. Even today there are around 700 olive trees in production, many of them centuries old, growing on the outer areas of the park. In front of the central area of the museum, surrounded by mulberry trees, the old well is surmounted by a “noria”, an animal-driven device from the middle of the 19th century that lifts water out of the well. The route finishes in the kitchen where pane carasau (crisp Sardinian bread) is made, and here secrets are revealed about this bread of the shepherds.

The sardinian Donkeys

In the Park, a group of little Sardinian donkeys reminds us of how they were indispensable for all kinds of work in the past. The aim of supporting donkeys here is to help protect a breed that could be on the way to extinction – the little albino donkeys that live on the island of Asinara. Among the horses you can see a Sardinian example, an Anglo-Arab mare, and a hinny, the rare offspring of a male horse and a female donkey.