Villacidro, a village surrounded by the mystery

In the middle of Campidano territory, under the Castangias valley, Villacidro rises up, the "village of darkness" by Giuseppe Dessì, the village of the ancient superstitions that, according to Francesco Alziator, academic and anthropologist, is reminded as the Sardinian Benevento.


There are numerous histories about the unusual rituals, propulsive of a kind of agitation that lingers on the residential area and above all on the surrounding woody area, as a symbol of the memory of a village with several names come from the legends transmitted since the origins. Among these ones, the epithet of "village of the hanged people" seals the cursed myth of Villacidro.


At the base of the legend, a curse that reminds the old histories told during the sleepless nights spent in the hangouts in the squares or in a friend’s home. The only element of annoyance is the fear. Listening something about evil spells or curses, influences own mind impeding it from distinguishing the reality from the unreal world, a subject that is a big success in Sardinia and even more so in the small country community.

It is a growing pressure of emotions; curiosity links with tension, together with the words of who tells the mythical history of the expulsion of Friars Mercedari from Villacidro. Once the presence of those friars in the village conciliated badly with people’s tradition, dedicated to exalting figures less angelic, such as demons and witches.


In 1858 the King Vittorio Emanuele II decided to close the convent of the village, located in the current square of the city hall, to which the Annunziata Church was linked, for supporting economically the war, confiscating the ecclesiastical goods.


The last seven friars of the order of the Mercedari were forced to move towards the central place of the Monastery in Cagliari, joined to the Bonaria Church. The crucial moment of the history is that concerning the retinue of those men out of the village by the inhabitants.


The situation degenerated because the injuries and the malicious gossips shouted against them, encouraged one of the friars to untied the leather belt that ties the typical white tunic and to throw it towards the offensive multitude, blaming against the following ill omen: "Chi si serbat po s'impicai" (This is useful for you for hang you).

People, without words for the friar’s speech, pull back themselves. The echo of the omen of the future misfortunes will always resound along the roads of the village, at least through the oral tradition that transmits the ancestral people’s happenings.


The peculiarity of the event told concerns the reason according to which Villacidro cried a high rate of suicides happened in the course of the time exactly according to the ways announced by the friar, namely through the hanging.


And the thought is addressed to the tragic event that happened in a whatever day, but, that will be remembered as the "day of the curse of Villacidro".