Giara di Gesturi – Nuraghe Bruncu Madugui

As you venture into the unpolluted landscape of the Giara plateau in Gesturi, also called Jara Manna (the big plateau) to distinguish it from the smaller plateaus of the neighbouring villages, you will enjoy the sight of the verdant expanses that make this place stand out for its amazing beauty.

A few hundreds of metres from the entrance, you will find one of the oldest Nuragic complex found in Sardinia, known as proto-nuraghe of Bruncu Madugui (the local name) or Maduli (the archaeological name). Bruncu means "a protuberance or extension of the coastline" while the toponym Madugui has not yet been deciphered. Looking imposing at four metres high, the Maduli proto-nuraghe distinguishes itself from the more ordinary nuraghes for its corridor-like layout, though over the centuries the floor plan has been entangled in multiple structural additions.

The first excavation campaign, led by the Sardinia-born archaeologist Giovanni Lilliu, took place in 1962. The large corridor has niches built between the walls and steps leading up to two circular-plan rooms upstairs. Recent discoveries have suggested instead that it might date back to the middle Bronze age (1600 BC), and this has led to a different understanding of the purpose of the rooms.

A village dated to the final Bronze Age (after the protonuraghe) partly excavated and composed of blocks of huts in the central courtyard can be visited nearby.